The Beekeeper

The Beekeeper

Honey bees have always been a part of New York City life, with beehives dotting roofs of hospitals, orphanages, and tenements. However, as the city became more cosmopolitan, beekeeping gradually fell out of fashion, and then in 1999 beekeeping was banned outright. But the harrowing reports of colony collapse disorder in 2007 created an international focus on honey bees. Concerned citizens all over the world rushed to aid the ailing bee, and New Yorkers fought to have the ban lifted in 2010. Interest in beekeeping, particularly in cities and especially in New York City, has exploded, and there is a swarm of media attention surrounding bees and those who keep them. With cows, pigs, and most other livestock out of the question, raising bees is a way to be a small-scale farmer in your own backyard, or on your own city rooftop. And too, there is something calm, peaceful, orderly about bees that people are drawn to, and in seeking to understand more about them we are often seeking to understand something deeper about ourselves.

The Beekeeper follows a beekeeping season in New York City shortly after the ban was overturned. The film takes place on rooftops and in bee yards across the boroughs to follow one season of honey production by Gotham's hardest-working insects. From the roof of the Waldorf Astoria to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, swarms are caught, beekeepers are stung, honey is harvested, and the season draws to a close with a dramatic NYPD raid on dozens of beehives in a Queens backyard that reveals the sticky nature of New York’s urban beekeeping scene. Whereas honey bees live in communities in which the group is more important than the individual, this is not always the case with humans. In following a season of beekeeping in New York City, we are able to observe a relationship between humans and honey bees, and between humans and humans. Looking at these everyday interactions explores what’s plaguing honey bees from a different angle. If we’re not considering the bees and putting our own interests first, whether it’s on a small or a large scale, there are going to be problems for bees. The health of honey bees is a reflection of our health as humans. If they are struggling, it is because we are struggling, to find a healthy, peaceful, productive way to live.