Health & the Hive: A Beekeeper’s Journey explores the importance of honeybees in our lives. Topics addressed in the film include pollination, queen breeding, disease control, bee venom therapy, organic agriculture and honey-based plant medicine.
The central figure in the film is Todd Hardie of Honey Garden Apiaries (www.honeygardens.com). Hardie, a lifelong beekeeper, is inspired, articulate and knowledgeable about bees. For him, keeping bees and making plant medicines is a series of partnerships with farmers, horticulturalists, queen breeders and many others. The film follows the web of teamwork that makes up Honey Gardens Apiaries.
The current crisis of the bees which has received so much media attention is not the central focus of the film, but it is impossible to talk about bees these days without addressing that crisis. In the view of one of the experts in the film, the “mysterious disease of the bees” is nothing more than the consequence of bad agricultural practices. Bees, one of the best bio-indicators in nature, the proverbial canaries in the coal mine, reveal how degraded our environment has become. The film suggests that a more respectful, less industrial approach to agriculture in general and beekeeping in particular will lead to a better outcome for both bees and the humans who are so dependent upon them. (53 min.) 2008
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