20130827: Documentary Review--Vanishing of the Bees

Vanishing of the Bees

1. American live action feature length film, 87 minutes, documentary, history, entomology, 2009.
2. IMDB: 7.0/10.0 from 475 users.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 59% from 17 reviews, 'no consensus yet'; 69% like it from 622 audience ratings.
4. As themselves: Davey Hackenberg (bee keeper), Dennis van Englesdorp (Dept Entomology, University of Maryland), Maryann Frazier (Dept. Entomology, Penn State), Dave Mendes (bee keeper, 7000 hives), David Pettit (Natural Resources Defense Council).
5. Colony Collapse Disorder is described.  This occurs in 35/50 states in the USA.  Dave Hackenberg raised the red flag in 2006.
6. Historical context of humans interactions with bees (millenia long) is sketched for different ages and different geographical locations.
7. The search for the cause of CCD continues.  Several possible causes were eliminated (certain bacteria, a virus or two, a tiny parasite).
8. America grew short of bees a few years back; the Feds were petitioned to allow foreign bees to fill the shortfall.  Bees were brought in from Australia.  This will not be a long-term solution.
9. A contributor to the bees' troubles is the practice of taking honey from hives and replacing it with sugar water.  The bees need the extra components that occur in nectar of various flowers.
10. Price competition: China, Argentina, India undercut world honey prices.  Many of these 'honeys' are highly adulterated with lactose and corn syrup.  These honey supplies force many American bee keepers to be migratory--that is, make their money from pollination, not from honey sales.  Life on the road is tough on the bees in terms of diet and wear and tear.
11. One of the worst was a discussion of 40,000 hives getting CCD within about 3 weeks.  That's about 2 billion bees.
12. The dangers of monocultures: these are farms that grow one species, such as all corn, or all wheat, or all soybeans.  This is a modern model inspired by Monsanto.  Monocultures require insectides in large amounts, since monocultures are the easiest prey of insect pests.
13. Pesticides have many ill effects on honey bees.  Modern pesticides are internal and systemic: they remain in the plants being grown throughout their lives.  So bees have almost continual exposure to the poisons.
14. There seems next to no research (in the US) on long-term, sub-lethal pesticide doses on hives as a whole, from eggs to adulthood for individuals.
15. France and Germany seem to be ahead of us on limiting systemic pesticides.  The French got the problem about ten years earlier, and called it mad bee disease.  After the 'bad beekeeping' charge was disproven, the beekeepers got scientific evidence together, and set a lawyer on the French government.  The government banned the systemic pesticides made by Bayer for corn and for sunflowers.  Similar movements started in the UK and Italy.
16. Davey Hackenberg: the Europeans take pesticides off the market until safety has been proven.  In the States, the EPA looks at risk assessment based on testing against instantaneous lethal doses.  So in the States, the pesticide stays on the market until studies at the pesticide producer says it's bad.  That is, never.  The EPA does not do research itself, so it's the fox guarding the hen house against the foxes.
17. Over 95% of the food we eat is treated with systemic pesticides.  Also, fruit and vegetables consumed by Americans is tending to be grown outside the US, to make more room for corn, canola, soybeans, wheat.
18. In a weak parallel to actions in Europe, the NRDC filed suit against the EPA to help straighten things out.
19. Checking back with the French, the bees seemed to bounce back within a year of the systemic pesticides being banned.
20. The film convinced me that the EPA needs to be changed so that it does its own research.  The 'cheap' food we have is not all that cheap.  Sustainability of American agriculture does not seem all that certain.
21. Five stars of five.

Cinematography: 9/10 Always competent.  Some of the archival footage is iffy.

Sound: 10/10 No problem, except the narration.

Acting: N/A

Screenplay: 10/10 Moves along well, and makes points effectively.