Paris, for the Bees

Pollen Nation will screen at the Paris Environmental Film Festival, November 26th, 4pm at Cinema la Pagode : 57 rue de Babylone. We sent the film off for French subtitling today...

The Bee Broker

Singeli's story on bees and the almond industry was published today in the San Francisco Chronicle Sunday magazine.

Here's what one reader had to say:

Singeli Agnew's article on Joe Traynor's bee brokering for apiarists and almond growers was an excellent bit of writing on a fascinating subject . I am...beekeeper who has experienced many heartbreaks the past few years as my bees have repeatedly died off, no matter what I do to keep them healthy and alive....Agnew avoided the triteness of many newspaper and magazine articles on bees and wove together, briefly and elegantly, an accurate report on modern big time beekeeping, its major players and issues, and what bees mean to each of us.

Tom Clark
Piedmont, CA

Award for "Promoting Awareness of a Critical Issue"

Montana CINE Film Festival awarded Pollen Nation an honorable mention for "Promoting Awareness of a Critical Issue" at their annual festival in Missoula October 3- 7th at the Blackfoot Theater in Missoula. The film screened for elementary schools all week, followed by evening and weekend screenings for a general audience.

Berkeley Screening With Claire Kremen

SAFE Food and Farming Film Series
Thursday, October 18, 6:30 pm
The Hillside Club
2286 Cedar Street in Berkeley
Screening will be followed by a discussion with MacArthur Genius Fellow Claire Kremen whose research investigates the contributions of native bees to agricultural pollination. Her works seeks to answer the question of how pollination services could be enhanced through altered land management practices, conservation of natural habitats, alternative farming practices, and restoration.

October Screenings

Mill Valley Film Festival
Pollen Nation will be part of a shorts program entitled “Bee-ing Me”
Saturday October 6th, 2:45 pm at the Throckmorton Theater
Sunday October 14th, 6:00 pm at the Throckmorton Theater

Ojai International Film Festival
Pollen Nation will precede the film “Off the Grid,” a film about Taos Mesa.
Saturday, Oct 6, 3:00 pm at Matilija Jr High School

Taos Mountain Film Festival
Friday, October 5th, 6:00 pm at the Taos Community Auditorium. (tune in to KTAO 101.5 Thursday at 9:15 am for a discussion with our composer Michael Shorr and other Taos filmmakers.)

Montana CINE Film Festival
Wednesday, October 3, 7:00 pm at the Blackfoot Theater
Sunday, October 7, 7:00 pm at the Blackfoot Theater

Pornography

The almond trees unfold their blossoms right around Valentine's Day every year. By then, more than half the honeybees that exist in this country have been trucked in and are now poised between the orchard rows, ready to get to work. It's an exhausting affair; an unnaturally early spring for most of the bees, and a simple diet that lacks nutrition. And - as one beekeeper told Singeli - the diseases passed in this floral brothel make it a risky venture for the beekeepers. Here's Josh, trying to catch some action on film.

600,000 acres, 40 Billion Bees

Up in a copter above the almond bloom, on a cold February morning. Josh braced himself against the wind, bare hands turning blue, to capture a sense of the magnitude of this crop. The rows extend as far as the eye can see....

Deadouts

In December, we called David Hackenberg, one of the beekeepers we were working with. Just that morning, he'd discovered most of his hives empty - the bees were gone, and even all the way across the country, on a bad cell connection, the shock and devastation were obvious in Dave's voice. In the midst of filming, we were suddenly immersed in a major news story. When we met up with Jeff Anderson again in California in January, he badly wanted to find us a few active, brimming hives to film...it wasn't easy. The losses had been extraordinary, and he was struggling to stay positive. Almond contracts loomed, and every day Jeff was finding more deadouts. Here we are filming one of the few strong hives with sound woman Julie Caine.

The First Load

Eagle River, Minnesota.

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