You may not have noticed, but many honey bee populations are on the verge of extinction. Pennsylvanian beekeeper David Hackenburg was the first to sound the alarm in 2005 when he noticed many of his hives were being abandoned. Now the mysterious phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder is proving a serious, global issue: the bee is responsible for the pollination of a third of all fruit and veg.
No single answer is given here, but the three fingers of blame point to pesticides, monoculture and the artificial insemination of queens. The filmmakers tackle a niche subject by presenting the film as a storybook, with each ‘chapter’ represented by a turn of the page. The thoughts of scientists and beekeepers mingle with cheaply animated sequences and news clips, but there’s little form to the structure, the editing is amateurish and the narration is puerile. It’s a worthwhile subject – but the film is too poor to justify a release.