Planet in Focus: The Ailing Queen

By Matthew Higginson, LEAF
Read more reviews from the Planet in Focus film festival, sponsored by WWF.
Director Pascal Sanchez opens with a long shot of a pickup truck driving along a dirt road in Quebec’s Laurentien mountains.  As it approaches the camera you can hear Kalonji blasting out of the speakers.  We’re then introduced to the reggae-loving beekeeper that is Anicet Desrochers.  His family, full of award winning honey and mead producers, works only with traditional methods and prefers not to be pegged as “innovative” — they’re just “going back to the basics.”  I like this guy already.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke6eprfeZxM&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]
We watch as Anicet travels around his expansive crops and talks about the distinction between the honey produced by bees in his buckwheat crop versus honey from some of his others – my mouth is beginning to water.  Biodiversity makes better honey he says, and by keeping diverse, certified-organic crops he is able to keep his bees healthy.  Later, as he ensures they get enough milkweed and other immune boosting pollen before winter, it becomes apparent his care for these buzzing creatures extends far beyond a simple business partnership.
His other calling is to help fellow bee keepers by developing queens and shipping them across the province — all by hand.  It is almost unreal, and to get the intricacies of his art one needs really to watch him in action.  When production slows down (much of the area produces around 50 percent less than its average during the year this documentary was shot), Anicet’s philosophy shines through.  Why is he working so hard to support the rest of the bee keepers?  Because he’s trying to encourage regional businesses to forget about money, and focus on building a community.  He doesn’t believe in mass production — whether it comes to beef or bees.
Sanchez also interviews other bee keepers, and one cannot help but notice that as they fumble with their balance sheets, and struggle to make ends meet, Anicet is jetting across to award ceremonies and scooping up medals for his work.  He must be doing something right.
This was eye-opening for me; illustrating just how bee keeping can be more sustainable, illuminating the gloomy reality faced by the world’s primary pollinators.  While Sanchez chooses not to show the reverberations when it comes to food production, Anicet puts it wonderfully stating simply “we’re stimulating the environment, and spreading our energy out there.”
The film closes with him obsessively checking in on the health of his bees after the first snowfall.  He checks in on each, as if he were a father checking in on his children, and then looks back into the camera with a huge grin. “It’s alive, man.  It’s full of bees.”  If it’s going to be anyone looking after the future of agriculture, I’m there’s a guy like Anicet on our side.