Vanishing of the Bees DVD

Vanishing of the Bees DVD

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Vanishing of the Bees

As actress-narrator Ellen Page begins… If you like fruits and vegetables, you like bees. Honey bees pollinate one-third of your diet. And they're in deep, deep trouble…

Vanishing of the Bees takes a poignant in-depth look at the worldwide disappearance of the honey bee. The problem first brought to light by veteran beekeeper David Hackenberg in October of 2006, this stunning documentary examines why honey bees have been mysteriously disappearing from their hives, often by the thousands in mere hours.

Known as Colony Collapse Disorder, this crisis affects not only beekeepers, but also the farmers who depend on the delivery of commercial honey bee hives to pollinate more than $15 billion worth of U.S. crops, including apples, broccoli, almonds, watermelon, onions, cherries and a hundred other fruits and vegetables. And without the bees to pollinate crops, one out of every three bites of food on our tables vanishes, too.

Vanishing of the Bees follows David and fellow beekeeper Dave Mendes as they struggle to keep their bees healthy and they travel cross-country to console other desolate beekeepers facing the same dilemma.

Meeting up with the owner of the largest honey bee operation in the U.S. – a 5th generation beekeeper in Yuma, Arizona – they learn he has inexplicably lost more than 2 billion bees in a very short period. Gone without a trace, he's never seen anything to this degree in his life.

What's behind these unexplained disappearances? With scientists casting doubt on known pathogens and parasites as the origin of the problem, this daring documentary pinpoints a single, probable cause and a handful of contributing issues behind Colony Collapse Disorder.

Filmed across the United States, Europe, Australia and Asia, this 90-minute documentary explores the increasingly troubling effects of commercial farming methods upon the planet and its inhabitants. Along the way, organic beekeepers offer up everyday solutions and generous helpings of hope along with their explanations for this tragic loss.

The ancient world believed that bees were prophetic – that their actions were messages not to be ignored. Could it be they're trying to tell us something, but we're just not listening?