Bee Movie at first seems to illustrate a real need for bifurcation, with any interaction between humans and nonhuman nature—in this case bees—not only advised against but outlawed. Jane Lamacraft notes that “the contrast between the hive, humming with contented collaborative endeavor, and the competitive, stressed-out human world, makes you agree with Barry (Jerry Seinfeld): ‘No wonder we’re not supposed to talk to them. They’re insane’”(60). And Barry’s interaction with humans reveals a shocking revelation: humans are stealing honey from bees for a profit, so Barry takes them to court, suing the human race for their exploitation of all bees. With this premise in place, the film seems geared toward advising the same kind of separation advocated by films such as Bambi. For us, the film offers a complex solution to questions broached in Bambi. Although Bambianswers “no” to questions regarding human and nonhuman nature’s ability to peacefully coexist, Bee Movie asserts that bees and humans must live and work together for both species to survive, either individually as represented by Barry’s relationship with Vanessa, or collectively, as illustrated by the drastic loss of plant life when bees go on strike, refusing to pollinate and thus regenerate flowers and other plants around the world.
There is no doubt that bee populations are decreasing rapidly and that their annihilation would have a devastating effect on agriculture. According to Diana Cox-Foster and Dennis vanEnglesdorp’s March 31, 2009 article in Scientific America, in 2007, due to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), “a fourth of U.S. beekeepers had suffered … losses and … more than 30 percent of all colonies had died. The next winter the die-off resumed and expanded, hitting 36 percent of U.S. beekeepers. Reports of large losses also surfaced from Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Europe and other regions.” These losses may be catastrophic for farmers, Cox-Foster and VanEnglesdorp explain, “because one third of the world's agricultural production depends on the European honeybee, Apis mellifera,the kind universally adopted by beekeepers in Western countries.” Loss of bees, then, would deplete agricultural products that benefit humans. But because these bees also pollinate other plant species, their depletion could have widespread effects on a biotic community, destroying whole species of flowers and trees.
Researchers see human factors contributing to this loss of bees. Cox-Foster and VanEnglesdorp cite poor nutrition, pesticide exposure, stress-related viruses, and fungicides as factors influencing colony collapse. In order to slow the collapse of bee colonies and ensure agricultural pollinization, Cox-Foster and VanEnglesdorp assert that beekeepers need to act quickly to minimize disease and ensure good nutrition and less exposure to pesticides for their bee colonies. Farmers too should decrease their use of harmful pesticides and herbicides, so bees can survive and help maintain a food supply for both humans and bees.
Bee Movie illustrates the catastrophic losses such a lack of pollinization might cause, not because bee colonies have been destroyed by human farming techniques but because bees go on strike. By elucidating this connection between bees and human production, the film also reinforces the need for interdependent relationships between humans and bees, relationships that also draw on both organismic and chaotic approaches to ecology. The film tells this tale of interconnection between human and nonhuman nature through the eyes of Barry, a bumblebee who has just graduated from the equivalent of high school and must choose his job to help keep the hive going. The conceptualization of the process of producing honey works well, with intricate detail, but Barry rebels and joins the pollen jocks instead, leaving the hive to collect pollen for honey processing.
Humorous elements of his first journey out with the pollen jocks show the dangers of connecting personally with the human world and contending with human civilization. The pollen jocks pollinate flowers with pollen power all over New York City but mistake a tennis ball for a flower. Barry rides on a car window with other bugs toward home, flies into a rainstorm and escapes into an apartment window, entering the apartment where he is nearly killed by a tennis player, Ken (Patrick Warburton) until his friend, Vanessa, saves the bee because, as she puts it, all life has value to her. Despite a bee law against talking with humans, Barry thanks Vanessa, and they become friends. Dangers of the human world are countered by this personal connection, facilitating a move toward explicit interdependence.That connection is nearly shattered, however, when Barry learns about humans’ exploitation of bees by stealing their honey and works to legally separate bees from the human world. With Vanessa’s help, Barry takes the Ray Liotta Private Select Honey company to court and wins, shutting down honey production and sending all honey back to the bees. All honey production stops, and bees lie back and grow fat, but without pollination, all flowering plants begin to die.
Once Vanessa points out the dead trees and flowers everywhere, including her flower shop, Barry responds, realizing that humans and bees must work together interdependently for both species to survive. He must get the hive working again to save the flowers. With Vanessa’s help, they hijack a flower-covered float from the Tournament of Roses Parade and take it to the bee community and their pollen jockeys. Once the flowers are pollinated, other plants and flowers respond, demonstrating the symbiotic relationship they share. And that relationship is extended to the human world in Bee Movie, not only because Barry and Vanessa set up shop together, but also because bees’ pollination sustains plants that sustain both human and nonhuman nature. The chaos of bee colony collapse is now under control in a biotic community grounded in organismic approaches to ecology.
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