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AFF review: “Queen of the Sun”
“Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us?” opens with an astonishing image: A dancer encased in a swarm of bees from waist to chin unhurriedly waves upraised arms and sways like a reed in the wind.
It’s a luminous, compelling start to a luminous, compelling film. In the way Rachel Carson awakened us to the environmental crisis caused by DDT in “Silent Spring,” Collective Eye’s documentary alerts us to the role of humans in the worldwide disappearance of bees.
Since the U.S. Deptartment of Agriculture reports about one in three mouthfuls of the food we eat comes directly from honey bee pollination, colony collapse disorder, aka bee depopulation syndrome, is a matter of pressing concern.
To illustrate the extent of the problem, director Taggart Siegel (“The Real Dirt on Farmer John”) leads us down a garden path of discovery with affected beekeepers and scientists on the ground in the United States, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Like the philosophical ‘possum in the cartoon “Pogo” said: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” And in contrast to the dazzling beauty shots of bees visiting flowers, we meet the perpetrators of the honeybee crisis.
These include pesticides, mites, queen breeding, artificial insemination and, especially, monoculture farming — growing one crop exclusively over a vast area. To pollinate the almond bloom in California, millions of bees are imported from out of state.
We watch as hundreds of hives are piled high on 18-wheeler truck beds, shrink-wrapped in plastic and driven cross-country to waiting orchards. Then high-fructose syrup, the controversial sweetener ubiquitously used in processed food and beverages in this country, is fed to the bees after their journey.
The cast of concerned characters includes author Michael Pollan (“Food Rules”), biologist Scott Black, executive director of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, and Slow Food International president Carlo Petrini, but the real stars collect nectar.
The loss is alarming, but this is no polemic. Solutions, such as turning sections of monoculture farms into acres of flowers so bees won’t have to be imported, are proposed. In Manhattan, petitioners are seen protesting the local ordinance against keeping bees.
Past documentaries, such as “Silence of the Bees” (2007) and “Vanishing of the Bees” (2009), have examined the issue, but with gorgeous cinematography, delightful animation and apiarist interviews, “Queen of the Sun” calls us to action in the plight of a busy fellow planetarian.
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