"♪Subtitles by♪  XQ2☻♥" "My great-grand father and my grandfather kept bees, and my father kept bees." "At first I wasn't very interested, I was afraid of bee stings." "When my father got on in years, he said to me:" ""If you keep on avoiding bees, I'll just sell them."" "That really got to me." "I told myself:" ""If my parents could stand the bee stings, then so could I."" "After all, I'm no sissy." "The bees fed our family." "They were a part of my grandfather's cannery." "They pollinated the rspberries, pears and apricots and his orchards and also the cucumbers" "I loved my grandfather for all the animals he had;" "horses, dogs, birds, even a roebuck." "But what he loved most were his bees." "He had 150 bee colonies." "He even built a special house for them." "Lying in the grass in his garden, I could hear the bees buzzing." "But I didn't know that I was watching the flowers having sex." "The plants, my grandfather explained, are rooted to the ground." "They can't run across the field and hug each other." "But they can't have children on their own." "What they need is a messenger of love." "A bee." "To attract a bee, the plants produce sweet nectar." "The bee drinks from one flower and flies to the next, taking along male pollen on its fur." "So, while looking for food, it pollinates plant after plant" "And each plant starts to bear fruit." "My grandfather was a patriarch of gardens and bees people and machines." "He was fascinated by how everything interacted." "But the bees are in trouble, now." "A few years ago they started dying." "Not just our bees." "They're dying all over the world." "The news is full of reports." "They say it's a mystery" "I take to the road, to find out why." "The bloom is nearly full now." "It's just such a gorgeous time of year to be out here" "I mean it's just beautiful" "And no one sees this." "The bee guy sees it, the almond guy sees it." "Listen." "Can you hear that?" "That's the sound of money." "Fresh printed money." "Bees and trees." "Nice." "Ladies, how are you today?" "Ah, you're busy." "It's warm, it's sunny." "An old maid." "It's a nut that didn't get shaken and didn't get hulled." "And right there." "Delicious." "One third of our food wouldn't exist without bees" "My grandfather explained their secret to me" "Colourful and fragrant plants are pollinated by insects" "The plain and dry ones, by the wind." "The apricots and raspberries, on the jam labels, were printed by my grandfather." "His competitors were more efficient." "They had the fruit delivered by rail." "My grandfather went bankrupt." "All he had left were his bees." "They still brought him the nectar, but, the apples grew in a paradise, he had lost" "It's sort of a Faustian deal that we made with the almond growers" "We know, going in, that there are risks and opportunities, in the almond orchards." "You know, they pay a lot of money." "I mean." "It's no mystery." "We've got 4,000 hives here at 150 dollars a hive that's 600,000 dollars." "To me that's real money." "That might be Joe Mack." "He might be flying down to Bakersfield today." "I think California produces 80% maybe a little more, of the world production in almonds." "In terms of the almonds that are actually in trade in the world, it's higher than that." "It may be close to 90%." "It is not commercial to grow almonds on a very small scale." "I know of no reason why that system will not be sustainable for the long term." "There's nothing that I've seen, in my 35 years in the industry, which would lead me to think that that concentration of almonds in one area is... self-defeating in some way." "That it will somehow crash as a result of being concentrated." "I've seen nothing to that..." "to indicate that." "We would not have a business without bees." "Without some type of insect pollinator almonds won't set any crop whatsoever." "We've proven that again and again." "So... our business relies entirely upon pollination by bees." "Unlike bumblebees and butterflies, bees remain true to one type of flower." "Some bees fly only to apples, others, only to bellflowers." "They don't fly to a different type until they've finished the work they started." "But here they have no choice." "There are only almond trees." "Inside the hive the bees hand over the nectar to their sisters, who chew on it, until it turns into honey, and store it in empty honeycomb cells." "They put the pollen into pollen baskets, and store it as a protein reserve." "But the returning bees bring back even more information." "When I was at school, we watched a silent movie:" ""The Dances of Bees"." "It was directed by Karl von Frisch,  a scientist who received the Nobel Prize for discovering the waggle dance." "Bees, he discovered, use the dance to communicate to their sisters the distance to the best flowers and the direction to fly in." "The faster they waggle, the closer the food source." "In the darkness of the cinema, the bees were so annoying." "It was so hard to comprehend their geometry." "They were so awfully clever and complicated." "[Please, count along!" "]" "At the Freie Universität, Berlin, professor Menzel is studying the question of whether bees can make decisions." "His experiment poses a dilemma for the bees." "They already know a food source." "But receive information from another bee about a second, perhaps better, feeding site." "What to do?" "The bee is off." "Constantin, we can turn on the radar, now." "I'm on my way to the receiver." "Here we see the bee has decided to fly to the old feeding site." "She gets to the place where the food source used to be." "But now, there's nothing, there." "It makes a few reconnaissance flights." "And flies around, here, a bit." "She doesn't fly back." "Instead, she flies straight East." "To the East is the spot she was shown by the dance." "Someone's watching this feeding site." "And here she comes." "Ok, Red-23 has landed." "And she's drinking." "She flies back to the hive, not by the route she'd learned before, nor by the route communicated to her by the waggle dance." "But rather, a route she, somehow, figures out by herself." "Now she's back at the hive." "We can assume that even a brain as small as a bee's can envisage two possible outcomes, is able to anticipate the results of its behavior, and then, evaluate... then plan:" ""OK, I've decided on this, so now I'll fly to that spot."" "She's a lovely little insect." "Very tolerant." "Not very smart, but really tolerant." "Two weeks from today, It may look like an orchard to us, but to them it looks like a desert." "There is nothing to eat." "The almond grower will call me and say:" ""The bloom is over you may now go."" "So we do go." "Because if we leave the bees here, they'll starve." "We're about to be run over." " Este ribbon?" "(This ribbon?" ")" " Este ribbon y el otro. (and the other)" "Okay." "Thank you." "He is starting from the other ribbon." "So maybe we will go a little ways away." "If they'll just not spray the bees, that's great." "That's great." "'Cause it really..." "You know, ideally they'd spray at night." "When the bees are in." "By the time the material is dry, and isn't so lethal." "It's the next day." "If they'd just spray it at night." "But, you know, you can't see at night." "They don't know where they are." "These fields are massive." "They get lost." "So..." "They're going to do what they're going to do." "It doesn't kill the bees." "But it repels the bees." "If after this material has dried on the bloom, the bees bring that material back to the colony and feed it to the babies." "19 days later we see an impact on the brood" "We see brood die-off." "And it's the fungicide at work." "Pretty much everybody knows it." "That's the only two motivations in life my friends, greed and fear." "I don't know how to shrink a business or a lifestyle and be happy." "That's not in my DNA." "It's like; we're capitalists, we wanna grow." "Total global domination." "The bees are doing fine here today." "Let me tell you, for them today is like Sunday." "No wonder their honey turns out almost translucent." "Pure nature, no fungicide, no poison sprayed anywhere." "This will definitely be wonderful honey." "I can't wait to serve it." "Our native black bees are an old breed, that acclimatized itself here centuries ago." "If I brought bees from the lowlands, up here, the colony would have a hard time surviving the winter." "My bees need to hibernate for more than half a year." "They've acclimatized themselves over generations." "That's why it works well now." "What have we here?" "You don't belong here, with your yellow bum." "Scram!" "There, beyond that mountain, someone else has bees." "No idea what breed he has." "But they fly all the way over here." "The strange yellow tailed bees live in another bee hive." "Their virgin queen flew over the mountain during swarming and was inseminated here by drones." "Mating happens in mid-air." "The queen finds a swarm of drones." "Drones from another colony, from another beekeeper all congregate." "A queen mates with up to 10 drones" "And that's why there are these mixed breeds." " What breed is that?" " Carnica." "It upsets me a little that the old native breed is dwindling away." "Look, it has those yellow rings on its bum." "I used to have black bees." "My father, too." "Why did you switch?" "To tell the truth." "No more beekeeping with a ladder." " No more chasing after swarms." " No?" " No!" "Of my 70 colonies, only three swarmed." " I don't believe it!" " Yes, indeed." "Also, the Carnica hardly ever sting." " You're saying they sting less than the native breed?" " For sure." "Sometimes I help out friends with the native breed." "If I had to keep them again, I'd quit." " I couldn't keep 70 colonies." " Really?" "I don't even have a protective net." "I never use it anymore." " Wouldn't you like to switch?" " Ah, I think I'm too old for that." " You're not that old yet, are you?" " Oh, I am, I'm going downhill." "Mating in the air with drones from other colonies, not in the hive with the bee's brothers, is an ingenious way of protecting against incest." "The queen is the mother of all 50,000 bees in the hive" "She lays up to 2,000 eggs a day, the equivalent of her own body mass." "The other bees tend to her needs, care for her, feed and clean her." "When she dies, the bees must raise a new queen." "The process is risky and takes a whole month" "The queen can lay infertile eggs that develop into drones;" "male bees, or fertile eggs from which female, worker bees emerge." "The eggs hatch into larvae, which are fed by the bees with nectar and pollen" "Then, they seal the lid." "The larva pupates, and three weeks later a worker bee emerges." "The fat, male drones take three days longer." "They'll be fed their whole life long by the worker bees, in order to build up their strength for the daily flights." "They leave every afternoon, around 2:pm, in the hope of meeting a princess mid-air." "Those who don't get a chance, on the honeymoon flight, are killed by the worker bees in the fall." "In winter, drones would just be useless mouths to feed." "When I find that queen, I'm going to wring her little neck." "Here she is." "Here's the little two-timer." "That's what happens to those who seek pleasure elsewhere." "My grandfather's honey is not a gift from the bees, after all." "My grandfather steals the honey from the bees, and gives them sugar water to store for the winter, imstead." "Like the glass beads the Indians received in payment for their gold." "Even more ingeniously, grandfather manipulates them by breeding queens, that increase the bees' docility and diligence." "More profit, fewer stings." "If you want to command the bees you have to command the queen." "She is the key." "The bees decide when they want a new queen." "And build up a special cell for her." "Before the princess hatches, the old queen swarms out with the old bees, and leaves the hive to the younger generation." "The colony turns into two." "Breeders interfere with this process." "They take the queen away, which forces the colony to raise a new one." "But the new queen is queen by the breeder's grace." "The queen lays an egg here in this honeycomb." "Three days later, a larva hatches from the egg." "And that is the breeding stock." "From them I'll get a new queen with the same genes as her mother." "The bees will raise queens from these re-deposited larvae." "They'll think the queen laid them there." "Only the royal larva is fed, royal jelly, a secretion from the salivary glands of bees." "And then the larva, which would normally become a worker bee, turns into a queen." "So, now I put the frame with the larvae into the nurse colony, and I hope to get 51 queens from this frame." "So, bees, behave." "The nurse colony is nervous," "Good!" "It has been manipulated by the beekeeper." "and has neither a queen, nor brood." "The bees urgently need a new mother for the offspring, or else the colony will be dead within a few weeks." "They only need one queen." "But in their distress they tend to all the 51 larvae that heaven has sent them" "They feed them with royal jelly and build queen cells around them." "The first queen that hatches will kill the other ones in their cells." "There can only be one queen in the colony." "That's why the cells have to be harvested and placed in queenless colonies before they hatch." "You can see the queen moving her legs." "She'll hatch in the next few hours." "Now I'm going to stick it here, by the brood, on the honeycomb, so the bees can get to it from the bottom." "The queen opens the lid a bit while still in her cell, and sticks out her tongue so the bees can feed her." "This way, when she emerges, she's already strengthened." "The clouds help to see better." "There!" "Look!" "See all the drones?" "The drone dies during the mating ceremony." "When the queen returns from her maiden flight, she keeps five million sperms in her sperm bag." "In there they can stay alive for eight years." "There's the queen." "So..." "Once the queen lays enough eggs to cover the brood in the box, she's taken out and is ready for shipment." "This is Nitro, automotive paint." "Each year, we use a different colour." "It makes it easier to find the queen in the hive and you can see at a glance how old she is." "The queen travels with a royal entourage to wherever she's sent in the world, to escort her on her journey." "Now a puff of smoke, because the queen still smells of paint." "A little water, so they'll lick each other off and become friends and everything is fine." " So..." " 60 euros?" "Thanks." "The price list." "Right." "And the invoice." "Singer queens are sold to 58 countries, as well as artificial swarms;" "4 to 6 pounds of loose bees in a box, with a separately packed queen." "That goes to Innsbruck." " It'll be there tomorrow morning?" " Sure." "Good." "Before the settlers came, there weren't any honey bees in America." "But the colonists wanted to cultivate the prairie and grow fruit and vegetables." "To pollinate them, they needed bees." "New colonies have to be imported or cultivated on a regular baais." "I am a 'migratory' beekeeper." "In practice it means we go where the bees have the most opportunity to thrive." "That takes us across America." "In the course of a year we go from California, where the almonds and cherries begin the season, in early, early spring;" "February." "We then go to Washington State for apple, apricot and cherry pollination in late March and April." "We move the entire outfit to North Dakota for summer." "All the bees go for honey production in the summer." "By October 1st we've begun to close the circle moving the colonies back west before winter." "So in the course of a year it's one big circle." "Its a little under 1700 miles, from California to North Dakota." "We try to transport the bees in two days and spend one night on the road." "The less time the bees spend on the truck, the better and healthier they'll be." "The bees can't fly outside their hive when we're trucking them to, like, go to the bathroom." "So..." "The longer they have to stay in their box, and hold their potty the more unhealthy they'll be." "And it's stressful, and..." "It's not natural for the bees to be on a truck." "The sooner we get them off the truck, the better it's gonna be." "The breaks are short" "Without any airstream, it gets too hot inside the boxes." "On the plantations, 1½ million bee colonies interact, two thirds of all the bees in the USA." "And they infect each other with diseases and parasites." "The diseases travel along with them all the way across America." "Nosema is an intestinal parasite and eats the bee from the inside." "Wax moths destroy the honeycomb." "Foulbrood kills the larvae." "But the most dangerous of all is a mite." "Its name is Varroa Destructor." "His brooding site is the bee's own brood cells." "The young mites infest the larvae, as well as cling to adult bees, ram their jaws between the rings of the bee's body, and suck the bee's blood." "In the human world, these bloodsuckers would be the size of a rabbit." "Viruses invade the body through the open wounds, deforming the bee's wings." "OK." "There's very few bees here." "This is trouble." "So let's have a look." "There are no bees." "This is what we don't like." "Classic colony collapse disorder." "A queen..." "Twenty... friends... and nothing else." "This is a total loss." "And we don't know why." "Just... just gone!" "Plenty of pollen." "Plenty of nectar." "No evidence of (foul)brood." "I'm getting real comfortable with death on an epic scale." "I don't like it." "I doesn't burn and it doesn't sting like it used to." "You know, it used to be like:" ""oh God it's a death in the family"." "And now it's just something we gotta fix." "It's just..." "You know, I gotta fix it." "I don't have time to take it personally." "I know this hive didn't mean to die." "I don't know why it died." "But I can't fix it." "I just gotta move on." "I can't mourn the loss of this hive." "It's just part of the game." "We got 365 out of 456." " 456?" " 456 in-bound." "It's right at 20%." " That's our worst load." " Yeah, the worst one yet." "But the ones that are here look good." "So, hopefully the next ones aren't that bad." " 90 duds." " 91" "I am backed into a corner." "And I fight back with what I have:" "chemicals." "After the stressful journey the bees are given sugar water, mixed with antibiotics." "In Europe, North America and China the honeybee can no longer survive without drugs." "Ok... let's start the program." "This yellow neuron not only tells the brain:" ""That was a reward!"" "It also tells the brain that whatever is happening now is good." "And there are other neurons that are responsible for fear or defence." "But the 50,000 little brains network in a super-organism, which is more than just a bustling brown mass." "It's 50,000 members of a family, the population of a medium sized town." "Each bee, depending on its age, has a designated role." "No one give commands, and yet, everyone obeys." "Even the honeycomb is a part of this sophisticated system." "A communication network, full of information, passed on, in the dark hive odors." "I can imagine what a colorblind person misses out on." "but not, what the world looks like through one's nose" "The bees have 60,000 smell receptors on each of their antennae, which allows them to smell in stereo." "They also have gustatory hair on their legs." "As they walk across the honeycomb, they receive a 3 dimensional odor-image of the colony's condition." ""Where's the queen?" "Are enough eggs being laid?"" ""Are sufficient stocks being stored?"" "Without its colony the individual bee cannot survive." "It must subordinate its personal freedom for the good of the colony." "In each bee family, up to 2,000 bees die, every day and 2000 new ones are born." "Could it be, that the individual bees are like the organs or cells of a body?" "Is the super-oganism, as a whole, the actual animal?" "The really exciting question is:" "in a social context, is such a complex organism as a bee colony, with respect to its emotional mood an ordered system?" "We'd say, yes." "The bee colony as a whole also has feelings." "When the bees swarm out the colony is divided into two" "The commerial beekeeper beats the bees to it and turns one colony into four, to replace dead colonies." "Brood." "Honey." "Eggs." "♪ Oh, everybody needs somebody that they can talk to." "♪ Someone to open up their ears and let their trouble through." "♪ Now you don't have to sympathize or care what they might do" "♪ But everybody needs somebody that they can talk to" "Each colony is split up" "Eggs, brood and honeycomb are uncrated into 4 empty boxes like spare parts." "Thus mixing brood with other colonies." "Most of the queens die in the process." "New queens are delivered by FEDEX, and placed in the hives." "Things have changed rapidly." "We don't keep bees the way my dad did." "My grandfather would probably walk from this property... disturbed." "If he saw the way we keep bees today, he'd think: "My God, you have lost your soul, in the husbandry of the hive and the care and the compassion in the keeping of the hive."" "He'd say we've sacrificed our relationship with the colony." "But it was probably easier to maintain that relationship with the hive." "Because he was running, what..." "1,500 hives?" "We're running ten times that." "We have ten times the employees, we have ten times the property, we have ten times the square foot of plant and equipment." "We have ten times the trucks with ten times the power, at ten times the cost." "The black bees have raised a new queen without yellow stripes." "On her mating flight she never left the narrow valley." "Her daughters are, once again, racially pure." "Let's have a look." "At first sight, it's looking quite good." "But there's hardly any brood." "Ach shit, Fred!" "What do you see?" " Not good." " No." "Look!" "A classic case, very bad." "This is a foulbrood honeycomb if ever I saw one!" "I hope that was the only one." "Something's wrong with this one, too." "I don't like the look of it." "They haven't cleaned the floor." "I don't like the look of that." " We don't like that." " Aw, shit, damn!" " See that?" " Yes, I do." "This colony is lost, Fred." " You can smell it." " Yes." "If you can smell it, the infestation is really bad." "Should we set up everything for sulphur fumigation?" " Any idea what causes foulbrood?" " Bacteria." "It's highly infectious." "No idea where you got it." "Maybe from foreign drones." "I'm so sorry." "Rotten luck for you." "We drive south, to Shanxi Province, by car." "It's about 2,000 km." "(1,300 mi)*" "It takes us two days and two nights, two drivers take turns." "It's a long way to go." "As soon as we get to the south, we rent a big storage room, to dry the pollen of the flowers." "When the bloom begins, we buy flowers from the farmers." "Then we start to process them." "We bring a refrigerator in the car." "We plug it in when we stop for breaks on the way back." "The fridge helps to keep the pollen fertile." "When the bloom starts here in the North, we sell the pollen to the local farmers." "Mao once ordered that the sparrows be killed, because they rob the people of grain." "Billions of sparrows were killed." "The result was a plague of insects." "It was fought with insecticides." "The bees also fell victim." " Hello, I have the new pollen supplies." " Hello!" " Is 50 gram enough?" "(2 oz)" " Let's see." "There's not much this year." "That's all the pollen I have now." "I'll contact you when I've sold these." "I'll take 4 Yuan per gram, you can sell them for 5." "One bundle, 50 packets, please check." "Pay me after you sell them." "I'm sure you'll sell them easily." "15, 16, 17, 18, 19..." "Rumor has it that Einstein once said:" ""If the bees ever die out, mankind will follow 4 years later."" "I take a trip to the future." "I'm astonished to find regions in China where they use so many chemicals that all bees have disappeared." "They're not sure whether to let me watch or not." "No other country can afford to ask itself the question currently being posed at The University of Beijing:" "who's better at pollinating, man or bees?" "Science answers with a definite:" "NOT man!" "Here's what we've worked for all summer long." "We see this abundance of honey." "Beautiful!" "Beautiful, summer honey." "It's done..." "Off." "Off!" "Hey!" "It's mine!" "They don't like sharing too much." "My thought was, taste it." "Yeah, that's good." "That's real good, that's straight out of the hive." "It's traumatic." "It's hard on them." "They don't understand it." "They've been flying in the fields for months undisturbed, and now suddenly someone came and blew smoke in their face, and took the boxes off and scraped their top bars, and handled them roughly, and now the lid's back on and... the hive is a lot smaller than it used to be." "It's a four to five week lifespan." "A single bee produces about one teaspoon of honey." "For 2 lbs* of honey a colony has to fly 3 times around the world. (1 kg)" "Bees filter out the toxins with their own bodies." "They sacrifice themselves so that the brood eats only the purest of honey." "But traces of pesticides probably remain*." "How many Chinese migrant workers does it take to replace the bees?" "It took 4 billion bees a whole month, to prduce these mountains of almonds." "Even vegetarians depend on industrial animal husbandry." "What's causing the bees to die?" "Looking for clues, I come across the divine promise of growth, we learned in Sunday school." ""Be fruitful and multiply." "Fill the earth and subdue it."" "The massive death of bees is no mystery." "What's killing them is not pesticides, mites, antibiotics, incest or stress, but a combination of all those factors." "They are dying as a result of our civilization's success." "As a result of man, who has turned feral bees into docile domestic animals;" "wolves, into delicate poodles." "But why do the bees put up with it?" "We flew around the world 4 times to make this film." "On one of the last flights, while looking out of the window," "I remembered a story from 'Alice in Wonderland'." "The story of the Red Queen." "The Red Queen grabs Alice by the hand and runs off with her." "And on, until Alice is gasping for air." ""Faster, faster", the Queen cries." "The wind almost blows the hair off Alice's head, but the world around her stands still." "As if the trees and buildings were running, too." ""Faster", the Red Queen cries out, until Alice falls down exhausted." "She looks around and says," ""But we've been under this tree the whole time!"" ""Everything, just as it was!"" ""Of course it is", the Red Queen replies," ""It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place."" "'One of the first people to pull up to the scene, the Lakeville Firechief,' 'couldn't figure out why there was a cloud around the accident,' 'when there was nothing on fire.'" "There was a haze, a black haze, around the whole scene." "And I was.." "I just have never quite seen anything like that." "'Didn't know he drove right into a swarm of bees.'" "'Stung in the face a few times, immediately he ordered his crews' 'to wear full turn-out gear for protection.'" "'14 people have died, in the US, since 2004,' 'after being attacked by swarms of killer bees.'" "'Killer bees first escaped from a Brazilian breeding experiment,' 'then, migrated through Central America and Mexico.'" "'Along the way getting a deadly reputation;" "allegedly killing hundreds of people.'" "Killer bees are a cross between European and African bees." "Their correct name is Africanized honeybee." "26 swarms escaped from a lab in the University of Sao Paolo." "Are the bees finally striking back?" "Or are they helpless in the hour of need?" " Hey Revo!" " Hey, Fred!" "Came to get your bees." "So... gonna have to take off this soffit here." " You did say, I get a suit, right?" " Yeah, you'll get a suit." " Alright, Fred!" "You're my friend!" "In 1992 a local minister called me to his home." "He said, "I want you to come get my bees", because his neighbour had put in an exercise ring for his horses." "And so the bees that were on his property were stinging the horses, and the people on the horses, because the horses were making a lot of noise and vibrating the earth, and of course bees don't like that." "So, I went over dressed like this, with no protection, just a short-sleeve shirt, because I was used to working with the European bees, and I thought that this won't be too big of a problem." "But, I got over there, and of course it was." "The bees were much more ferocious than any I'd ever seen previously." "I wasn't sure exactly what they were," "I thought, what I'll do is, I'll find the queens and I'll put in nice new queens, because these bees were just too mean." "And so, I put in a gentle queen and the bees killed her immediately, and they raise their own queen." "It's always a good idea to pee first." " OK." " Before we get the bees excited." " Oh, yeah!" "So if you need to go, now is the time." " Mm, no, I think I'm pretty good." " You're pretty good?" " Yeah, I think so." " Ready Fred?" " Ready." "Move it down, just a tad." "Beautiful..." "Beautiful nest." " Yeah, it is." "Look at that." "Perfect rows." " Yeah." "Filled the cavity." "Yeah Rebo, these are your killer bees." "The honey flow's been on." "You can see that comb's real fresh." " The stuff further back is brood combs." " Yeah." "Look at it!" "It's beautiful." "Looks good, even in the bucket." "You know, Rebo, if you'd lived in Tucson, 15 years ago, somebody might have charged you $1,000, to take this out." "At the time I had mites, parasitic mites." "And so I thought, these really vicious hives, I won't treat them." "and so the mites will kill them." "The mites did not kill them." "These hives thrived with no treatment, whereas my gentle, treated hives did not do very well at all." "And so I began to think, maybe there's something to these bees." "At that time I was thinking, maybe these were African bees." "I didn't tell anyone... because I was afraid of what might happen if I did." " It's a nice brood." " Oh yeah, the yellow is brood." "Yeah." "Where is our box, Rebo?" " Oh I see,..." " That's what the string is for." "That's what the bears get in the hives for, huh, Fred?" " Yeah." "Not looking for the honey, they're looking for the brood." "There we go." " Pour 'em in the hives?" " Yeah, pour 'em in." "The queen may well be in this bunch right here." "Lid on." "It's quite a bit heavier than just the honey that we put in there." "Amazing how much a few bees weigh." "Let's put this on the edge here." "Wanna make sure..." " See lot on the bottom?" " Yeah." " There any bees on the bottom?" " Not many." " OK, good." "I think we're in good shape." "Aw, American are always afraid of being invaded!" "If not, illegal immigrants, then, killer bees." "I do have to wear a bee suit, now." "I do have to have to work my bees much more... carefully." "But it's easily worth it." "I know that they do make more honey." "And they make honey that doesn't have any chemicals in it." "So... that means an awful lot to me." "Looking good!" "Lots of drones." "The bees are not really native to Australia." "They arrived with the first settlers." "And over time some of them, of course, escaped." "And they got established." "So here, honeybees can survive without any human help." "which is very different from Europe, China, and northern America." "If we collect males, that's what is Rodolfo doing up there at the moment, we can basically study the queen genes, because the males are clone variants of the queen." "And I always refer to our feral bees here in Australia as a big bank account," "A bank account where you don't have money on it, you have basically genetic variations of genes on it." "With the work which we do here at the moment we basically try to withdraw some of our assets, and we use them for future bee breeding." " Well done." " Alright." " Can we have a look?" " Yeah." "Look." "Look at this." "It's really nice." "They're very lively." "The bees still have a grip on my family." "Now my grandchildren are fascinated by them." "What will they be eating when they themselves become grandfathers?" "My daughter and son-in-law are doing research on the bee's immune system, at the University of Western Australia." "In a gesture of welcoming, they burn my bee suit." "I could have brought in germs from my trip." "This is where the last healthy bees live." "A continent without the Varroa mite." " The papa bees don't sting." "See, I have it on my hand, and I'm fine." " Is that the mummy bee?" " No, that's a papa bee." "Domesticated Queens are inseminated with the sperm of feral bees." "To eliminate the risk of what happened in Brazil, the Australian test bees are brought to an uninhabited island, where they'll undergo a stress test." "If they pass the test they'll continue to be bred." "Perhaps even for the world market." "They might, of course, mutate into Frankenstein bees but, at least they won't do any harm, it's too far from the mainland." "But maybe the bees on the mainland become diseased, and only the ones, here, on the island stay healthy." "In that case I see Noah's Ark." "Ooh!" "We believe it's crucial to preserve the genetic diversity of bees." "We shouldn't try to produce specific traits, because then we'll continue to lose genes and genetic diversity." "Instead, we should try to bring new variants back into the population." "Killer bees have a better immune system, but we can't have wolves living among us." "We need to live side by side with the bees." "In other words, we have no choice but to look for a compromise between killer bees and the bees that we're currently breeding, so that we can both live in harmony." "We seem to be afraid of foreigners coming into the country, even though we're all immigrants here." "And so the African bees came, they didn't have papers they didn't have permission, they didn't have visas, or even passports." "And there was really nothing we could do to stop them." "They're completely wild creatures." "They have not been domesticated." "They are as they have always been." "And people were very frightened of that." "And then, when I went to Brazil... in 1995," "I found that the country had completely embraced the African bee." "That what we have been told about the African bees, that they didn't make honey, that they were not good pollinators, that they were impossible to manage," "I found that all those things were completely false." "They can survive on very scarce resources." "If I were a gambling person," "I would bet on the survival of the African bees over, just about, any other species." "So..." "So, I think they'll be here after we're gone." "The bees that I took out from the roof did not like their new nest and so they left." "They swarmed." "They will find a limb on a tree or something like that where they can cluster to take care of the queen." "From that cluster the bees will send out scout bees to look for a suitable nest site." "If a scout bee finds a suitable nest site, she will come back to this cluster of bees and she will tell her nest mates about the very good site." "And then, when they reach a consensus then they will all leave together." "Not even a bear could get to those bees!" "♪Subtitles by♪  XQ2☻♥"