The Pollinators Movie
The Bee Shed is proud to sponsor the local showing of "The Pollinators"..."a documentary about migratory beekeepers and their truckloads of honey bees as they pollinate the flowers that become the fruits, nuts, and vegetables we all eat." Showings at the Gray Duck Theater on 2/21, 2/22, 2/23, 2/28, 2/29, &3/1. A special one-hour discussion about the film will be held after the Sunday, Feb. 23 matinee. Show times here: www.grayducktheater.com show times (see attachments)
The Pollinators: A Different Kind of Bee
Movie
By Jacob Clark Blickenstaff
When I was growing up in Northern California in the 1970s, my parents read “back to the land” writings and took them to heart. For about a decade, I lived on what was essentially a small farm. We had chickens for eggs, a cow for milk, and a large garden that produced most of the vegetables we ate in the summer and fall. We also had a hive of bees that pollinated our few fruit trees, but that mostly lived on wild forage. I have clear memories of eating honey right from the comb collected from our own hive. It was pretty cool.
Bees have been getting attention for the last 10–15 years because of significant die-off events that threaten commercial agriculture worldwide. The 2019 documentary The Pollinators gives a detailed picture of the commercial bee industry in the United States, and examines the ongoing threats to bees.
The filmmakers talked to beekeepers, bee scientists, farmers, and even farm-to-table chefs to get a range of perspectives on the issues. Some of the farmers share innovative techniques they use to be more bee-friendly. The documentary includes suggestions for how individuals can make choices in their daily lives to support both managed and native pollinators.
Importance of Bees
Many of the fruits and vegetables we expect to regularly find in the supermarket rely on insects for pollination. Recall that pollen from a male flower has to get to a female flower to produce a fruit, and that what a botanist defines as a “fruit” includes a lot of produce a dietician would call a “vegetable,” including peppers and tomatoes.
Bees are so important for the pollination of nut trees like almonds that millions upon millions of bees are trucked to California every year for the short pollination season. Once that season ends, the bees are packed up and moved to other parts of the country to pollinate other crops like apples, cherries, and blueberries. Some beekeepers move their hives more than 20 times each year, following the flowering/pollinating schedules of different crops.
Threats to Bees
Many separate threats to bees have combined in recent years to make it especially hard for both managed and native bees to survive. Farmers have switched to pesticides that are less harmful to people, which is good. Unfortunately, the newer pesticides take longer to degrade in the environment, so once the pesticide is on a field, it can be toxic to bees for years to come. Other chemicals used on farms are also harmful, including fungicides to control fungus on crops and herbicides to control weeds.
When one kind of crop takes over large areas of land, only a short window of time occurs when that crop produces the nectar and pollen that bees need for food. Managed bees are fed or moved on to another crop, but local native bees have nothing to eat when the crop is not blooming. With little or no food, the hive is severely weakened. Bee colonies can also become infested with an even smaller insect, the verroa mite, a bee parasite. It attaches to the body of a young pupa or adult bee and sucks out essential nutrients. If several mites attach to one bee, they might kill it outright. The mites also carry viruses harmful to bees, causing even greater damage. While a healthy colony could probably handle any one of these three threats, two or more could be fatal.
A feedback loop exists in which the one problem weakens the colony, making it more susceptible to additional threats. It is important to note that beekeepers tend managed bees: Colonies can be fed when forage is not available and can be treated for mites; new queens can be introduced to keep a colony going. Native bees and other pollinators can’t move away from pesticides or from areas where crops replace seasonal forage, so they are even more susceptible to these hazards.
