BRATTLEBORO — Did you know that the honeybee is Vermont's state insect? It is also the state insect in 16 other states. This fact might seem like trivia, but it is not trivial. Honeybees are crucial to our survival.
Bees are responsible for more than honey. They pollinate 70 of the 100 crop species that supply 90 percent of the world's food.
But last year alone, 31 percent of the honeybee population in the United States was wiped out.
Written and directed by Markus Imhoof, a Swiss filmmaker and descendent of a long line of beekeepers, More than Honey is the filmmaker's journey to discover why bees are dying all over the world.
Large credit for this important, scientific, and serious film is due Jörg Jeshel, its director of photography, who offers an incredibly detailed, up-close look at what bees do so well. His footage shows how their every move is about maintaining the health and well-being of the colony, not themselves individually.
The intensely personal image of a bee caught in fungicide as thick as honey is gut-wrenching. Discovering that this bee and millions like it will be transported, pesticide-laden, in hot, non-ventilated trucks by “migratory beekeepers” across several states to pollinate other orchards is shocking.
The growth of bees and pollen (extracted from flowers, packaged and sold in areas without bees) as commodities is a stark example of how some parts of the world prioritize support of agribusiness before people's health and safety.
It is a value system gone wrong.
As in big business anywhere, the worker bees that create the products which make others rich are undervalued and deemed replaceable.
Like cattle in the meat industry, they are taken out of their natural environment, confined in tight, infested quarters, fed sugar water and antibiotics to sustain them, and stressed to their limit before they perish.
Imhoof says we have taken something feral and domesticated it to its demise, like “turning wolves into illness-prone poodles.”
Imhoof and his family do not accept death on this epic scale. They take it personally.
We all should.