Simple respect

November 9, 2007

The Real Life of Bees

By SUSAN BRACKNEY

If a beekeeper like me had been in the director's chair, the animated

film " Bee Movie " would have looked quite a bit different.

This op-ed makes the point of the interdependence and

interrelationship in nature, animals, and humans. Taking it further,

we need a gentler yet realistic way to teach kids respect for animals

and nature, rather than maybe through graphic stuff that shows how we

torture/kill animals. This piece also shows how how our sugary

commercialism hardly serves any purpose other than for profit, and a

little realism to start kids on the path to conscious thinking rather

than just self-gratifying entertainment could make a difference.

Aside from all our complex, legalistic debates among adults on the

pros and cons, it begins with simple respect. Learning that basic

principle in childhood, in part by being closer to nature, might help

future generations to be more conscious and creative than today so

that in order to effect change we don't have to go to extreme sugar-

coated entertainment like this that makes you only laugh or to lesson-

teaching graphic, violent, bloody, torturous videos that make you cry.

This part of the op-ed summarizes it well:

" But one of every three or four bites of food we eat is thanks to

bees; we truck bees many miles to pollinate about 90 different crops,

from apples and oranges to almonds and blueberries, a punishing

circuit that overtaxes the few colonies left. Of course, in " Bee

Movie, " pollen jocks merely buzz past and barren landscapes bloom

instantaneously into Technicolor glory.

But all these apiarian inaccuracies will be easy to forgive if wise-

cracking animated honeybees finally get people to care about the

rapidly disappearing real thing. "

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