As I mentioned in my blog at the beginning of the week, I am looking at the bees in my back garden with a new level of admiration and concern after watching the documentary Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us?.
With a poetic, positive attitude, director Taggart Siegel has crafted a documentary that addresses Colony Collapse Disorder, the potentially devastating problem of bees disappearing from their hives, as well as presenting us with an insight into the centuries old relationship between bee and human. It’s a relationship that is constantly changing thanks to the increase in mechanised industrial agricultural practices.
Director Taggart Siegel is currently in New Zealand working on a new documentary called Seed: The Untold Story (more on that later) and along with his producer and co-editor Jon Betz, kindly took the time to have a chat to us about making Queen of the Sun: What are the Bees Telling Us? and the on going issues facing these vitally important insects.
Lets start at the beginning. How did you become aware of the global bee crisis, and how did the two of you hook up to work on this project?
TS: Well when I was making The Real Dirt on Farmer John I became aware of farming methods, industrialised farming methods and problems that were showing up in 2005, and bees were really not on my radar until I read an article saying that if bees disappeared man has five years to live. It is a quote that was misquoted by Einstein but it was a quote that woke me up and said we really have to think about honeybees as this crucial species which are really helping keep everything going. And so within days I decided that was the next project, and spent three years filming around the world and spending a lot of time in NZ filming with the wonderful beekeepers here.
And Jon how did you become involved in the project?
JB: Well I had just finished filming a documentary on former child soldiers in Uganda so I had been very much in the humanitarian vein of things in film but focused on these issues that need to get more exposure, and so I was really drawn to the project and began working on it with Taggart. Fairly early in the process he’d started filming but we hadn’t really build the story yet, and so for me, it was a new discovery of bees it was sort of launching in as a person not knowing anything about the bee crisis into this vast, immense world of, you know - honey bees are the most mysterious insects and humans have been preoccupied with them for generations, and so Taggart and I really hit it off and started really exploring how can we get this film out there and make a difference and so its been an incredible journey.
And how easy was it to get this film out there? How easy was it to produce and distribute this film?
TS: Actually it was a very difficult time it was 2008 during the fiscal crisis and the stock market plummeted and we were in the middle of raising funds so it was a really challenging time to make documentaries in 2008, but it took a few years to make so we were able to raise funds during that time, and the distribution methods are changing so rapidly that we’re finding that TV is sometimes not the best way to get a documentary out there. So we created a grass root movement and opened theatrically around the United States and even in New Zealand, and thousands of people have seen the film that way, possibly even millions. So distribution is definitely being changed, the landscape is definitely being changed dramatically right now because TV is not always the main route.
Here in NZ we’re definitely screening a lot more documentaries theatrically. Cinemas are recognizing that documentaries are films people really want to see on the big screen, which is great.
JB: Yes, I think that’s been a huge help for us, art house theatres saying yes, we have an audience for this, people are interested in this again and we made Queen of the Sun as a film that could really entertain people for an hour and a half. Our primary mission was yes, we need to get all these facts across, but first we need to get people to fall in love with honey bees and just open up their hearts a little bit and really think about what this issue means for all of us. So for us having that primed by the Michael Moore’s of the world that really brought documentary into the limelight, and films like An Inconvenient Truth, these blockbuster documentaries have really helped us and many other filmmakers get the word out I think on many other subjects.
And you do such a good job of making us fall in love with the honey bee. Even though you’re looking at this potentially devastating event which taking place all around the globe, I felt the film had a real sense of hope. The people you talk to are making a difference and doing something about the problem, it’s an uplifting approach. Was that intentional?
TS: Very much so. In one way, we have to go into the darkness, into that belly of the beast and find out, wow bees are disappearing, why are they disappearing? Well pesticides, neonicotinoids, the industrialised, mechanised methods of farming and farming bees for the last 100 years and then at the same time Jon and I made a clear decision we don’t want to make a doom and gloom film so who are positive people out there who are really making a difference, not just caught in the system of industrialized farming and seeing it almost sort of more philosophically, and spiritually and holistically, and saying wow, we have to treat bees well because if we don’t bees are going to disappear and we could possibly disappear along with them.
And so our upbeat method was really go to beekeepers that really love and cherish bees and that’s usually the bio dynamic, or the organic beekeepers. And even families like Warren Thompson in NZ with his wife and three children, they’re emblematic, they’re just the most beautiful bee family, they all work together, they make things from the bees’ wax and sell their honey, and at the same time that’s showing the really positive side of bee keeping. All farms used to have these bees on the farms, and that could still happen because its such a growing movement now.
You traveled around America and Europe, and you also made it to New Zealand and Australia in your documentary. How does our situation compare with the rest of the world?
Well NZ I’ve been told when I was making the film, varroa mite had just hit and its now wide spread around the South Island so the method of taking care of varroa mite is often with chemicals and chemicals are the thing that normally get us into serious trouble because the varroa mite becomes stronger than the chemicals and they become super-mites. I think we really have to look what is the rest of the world doing, and then what is NZ doing? And NZ is almost imitating or copying the rest of the world in the industrialised farming methods. If you look at the neonicotinoids, which are the pesticides, they’re being used on a small island like this and it’s devastating for bees so there has been great decline in bees in NZ. You can blame it on the varroa mite, but really it probably comes down to the pesticides and the chemicals being used in farming.
And those are the factors you discuss in the film that are contributing to the disappearance of bee’s from hives and the pesticides colony collapse disorder. As you mentioned Jon, bees are a bit of a mystery – do we know exactly where they’re going?
JB: Well that’s part of the mystery of the Colony Collapse Disorder, the CCD Phenomenon that kind of hit when we were making this film. Prior to making this film in 2006 there was this big phenomenon, bees are leaving the hive and we don’t know why and they’re just vanishing. And it’s true that some of the reported decline in bees is from that, but also a lot of the decline is from a domino effect of other things. So what’s being coming out as the years have progressed is the retreat from some of the sensationalism of CCD, of yes there are still unexplained bees just vanishing from the hives and those are being correlated to pesticide use and to chemical use in the hives, but there’s all these other factors that we go into in the film such as when you’ve got such an industrialised system of agriculture, you actually have to truck bees in on these big semi trucks into the areas where they need to pollinate because flowers don’t bloom there except for that one or two weeks when that crop blooms, so bees can’t live there. And so then these bees from all over the place, in America they go to California and the Central Valley, they’re coming from all over the country, sometimes even shipped in from countries like Australia, and they’re spreading diseases to each other and then they’re all going back to their hives so what we’re realizing with CCD is it could be, what some people call the “death of a thousand cuts”, or just there are so many factors piling up on top of the bees, and they have very weak immune systems, very limited genomes and they can’t adapt as well as some of the pests like the varroa mite can and so it just adds up and you get this collapse like we had in 2006 and have continued to have every year after these much larger declines every winter.
Are you both still following the bee situation? Has it improved since the film was released in 2010?
TS: No, you know that’s what’s shocking. Jon have you heard any improvements? I’m still hearing like 30% - 35% loss each year.
JB: From 2011 to 2012 that winter which is the last winter there’s reports from, as it’s too early to have reports this year, it was still a 36% on average die off, with some people having as high as 90% disappearance from their hives. It’s catastrophic for beekeepers who make their livelihood from this and then they go out of business or because they’ve got family’s to support they fall into some of these traps of using chemicals that then is overall going to increase these declines. So it’s putting everything on a treadmill that’s pretty negative and for some reason we seem to have these crisis and then we sort of manage it and it doesn’t get talked about especially on the news because people are tired of it or whatever, but then they stay the same and so we’ve still got a problem on our hands that we still need to address. And we can only do it from each of our own places as consumers and who we are, and so buying organic and supporting you’re local communities, your local small farms that are keeping bees on the farm is a great way to help.
So, what can the average person do in their back garden to make a difference?
TS: Planting lots of bee friendly plants is really a great way and not using those house chemicals that you can get at the store now that, you know to kill insects or slugs or kill this and that. That’s hurting the soil and hurting the bees and all other insects, so I think the backyard gardener can always just plant things that are going to really help provide food for the bees for all the pollinators, not just the honey bees’ but the bumble bees and provide really good healthy nectar for them from the herbs to the lavenders. And it really can help a great deal when we do this. And of course to buy food that is organic and where chemicals haven’t been used.
Taggart, I believe you are in New Zealand at present, and you’re about to start shooting a documentary called SEED: THE UNTOLD STORY. At this stage, can you tell us a little about it?
Yes, we’re excited to start this new film called Seed. Because I think when your looking at the honeybee they’re pollinating all these flowers and then these flowers turn into seeds and there are millions of seeds. Well, what is a seed? And what’s happening to the seed? So what we’re finding around the world is that five companies own almost 67% of all the seeds for crops - from five chemical companies. They are kind of controlling all the seeds, which is also controlling our food, which is also controlling our decisions we end up making. And most people don’t save their own seeds. If you look back and see in the 1800’s everybody was saving seeds and everybody was sharing the seeds and so it’s all about looking into the world of how important seeds are.
It’s fascinating material, so make sure you catch Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us?, Thursday 17th at 8.30pm on Rialto Channel.
For more information on Seed: The Untold Story, go to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1165887134/seed-the-untold-story-documentary-film?ref=live