Event

COLONY

Members $9 Public $13
Includes Film+ Discussion + Tasting & Bee Product Sale

Sunday, November 28

2pm: Introduction to HONEY BEE DAY and FILM SCREENING
3:15pm-3:45pm: Q&A with Beekeeper RICH BLOHM
3:50pm-4:50pm: Apitheray Talk with FREDERIQUE KELLER
5pm: Honey, Mead, & Body Products Tasting and Sale

We admire some documentaries for their artistry and others for their urgency. Rarely do we see a
film that combines both of these qualities as impressively as this debut by directors Carter
Gunn and Ross McDonnell. Their topic is the world of beekeepers during the recent (and ongoing)
crisis known as colony collapse disorder. Colony follows several American beekeepers during 2008
and 2009 as the country's economy spiralled downward. Among them is David Hackenberg, who first
identified colony collapse disorder when he mysteriously lost eighty million bees from his Florida hives. Many keepers blamed
insecticides for killing more than one quarter of the bees in the United States, but no one had any evidence. We see the keepers search
for solutions, testify before politicians and confront pesticide manufacturers. The mystery is like something out of science fiction and
has dark implications for the future. Because our agriculture depends on pollination, when bees are in trouble, so is society. The
expression busy as a bee gains deeper meaning after hearing the quirky entrepreneur David Mendes describe his migratory pattern.
Packing thousands of hives onto a tractor-trailer, he travels across the country, renting out his bees to farmers for weeks at a time. At
the heart of this film is the Seppi family, newcomers to the beekeeping world who are guided by their deep Christian faith. As the Seppis
face the collapse of their colony and the economy, tensions course through the family. Gunn and McDonnell carefully compose these
scenes, attaining an intimacy without being intrusive. They are equally capable at filming on the microcosmic scale, drawing us into the
world of bees so that we root for their survival as much as our own. "Thom Powers (www.stfdocs.com) (USA, 2009, 88 min., color)