The movie highlights the challenges of keeping bees alive despite environmental perils.
The Pollinators, a new movie distributed by Demand Films (a company that allows people to request screenings in their communities), follows industrial beekeepers as they take honeybees across the country for pollination services. Director Peter Nelson has created a visual feast, interspersing beautiful closeup images of honeybees with shots of beekeepers driving forklifts full of beehives as they move bees from semi-truck trailer to field, over and over again. The film gives viewers an intimate look at the people and the insects responsible for pollinating the biggest crops in our nation.
Every year, in late February or early March, honeybees from all over the country are put on the backs of trucks and taken to the almond groves in California. The groves cover approximately 1.4 million acres, and it takes approximately 1.7 million colonies of commercial honeybees to pollinate this crop. After spending a couple of weeks with the almonds, the beekeepers move their honeybees to other huge crops that need pollination: apples, cranberries, blueberries, pumpkins and oranges. This system provides us with huge quantities of fruits, vegetables, and nuts. But this system is crashing. The bees are not thriving in these fields, which have essentially become toxic for them.
The pollinators are in serious trouble. According to one entomologist in the film, the rate of honeybee loss is 50 percent annually. In order to continue pollination services, commercial beekeepers need to buy new honeybees every year to compensate for these losses. The honeybees themselves have become products that are mass produced because we are losing them so fast. The film only briefly mentions the larger issue — the decline of all pollinators, including native bees like bumblebees and mason bees and other insects like butterflies — that are crucial for ecological health. Many native flowers and trees can only be pollinated by specific pollinators, and entomologists have seen a decline among these insects, too.
While honoring the heroism of the people who have made it their life’s work to pollinate our crops with honeybees, the film unleashes a damning critique of our agricultural system, which is entirely dependent on pesticides, fungicides, and chemical fertilizers for success. The scientists interviewed for the film explain the especially devastating effects of neonicotinoid pesticides, which destroy the neurological system of bees and weaken their natural immunities, as well as the damaging effects of herbicides on natural habitats. Simplified agriculture takes a landscape and eliminates everything but one plant. Insects, birds and other creatures starve in spaces like these. Corn, soy and almonds are examples of crops that have overtaken vast expanses of our country. The film suggests we need to shift our agricultural practices so that these spaces and our nonhuman collaborators can thrive once again.
The Pollinators leaves us with a few examples of strategies for change. Several farmers explain alternatives to large-scale monocropping: crop rotation, cover crops, native flower plantings that encourage beneficial insects and produce food for native pollinators, and organic farming. While the film cannot explore all the complexities of this dire issue we are facing, the ultimate message seems to be that as consumers, our society can affect pollinator decline if we choose to buy the products that come from farmers who use more sustainable systems. We can also take steps in our own gardens and backyards to make a pesticide-free world full of native flowering plants that support the health of bees, birds, butterflies, frogs and ourselves.
Heather Swan is a UW-Madison faculty member and author of Where Honeybees Thrive: Stories from the Field.
