A study of bees and their effect on mass agriculture.

Picture gallery

From a small beehive in the Swiss Alps to the huge almond fields tended by an agribusinessman in California (to whose ears the buzzing of bees is “like the sound of freshly printed money”), everyone is concerned by the decline in the population of hives. Which is why Markus Imhoof, grandson of a bee keeper, traveled around the globe with camera in hand. The causes are many: vast and intense monoculture overworks the bees, they are given antibiotic treatment and threatened by varroa (parasitic mites), viruses and pesticides, whose effect are in turn reinforced by measures taken against the weakening of colonies such as the transhumance of hives, which stresses the bees...

Thanks to expert technologically, this documentary puts the viewer right in among the bees, making it possible to experience the various steps in the lives of a colony (eggs laid by the queen, bee dance, swarms, honey collection...) as well as the suffering inflicted by man in his thirst for money. Should flowers be fertilized manually, as is already done in China, to achieve an ever higher yield? The film takes an up-close look at the symbiotic lives of these intelligent insects, where the queen only lets herself be fertilized in mid-flight: and what if they simply refused to let themselves be alienated?