More Than Honey Page #2

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that are responsible for fear or defence.

The most exciting question is:

in a social context, is an organism

as complex as a colony of bees

a controlled system

in regard to its emotional disposition?

We would think, yes,

the bee colony as a whole has feelings.

Let's have a look.

At first sight, it's looking quite good.

But there's hardly any brood.

Blast, 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.

- Blast, damn it.

- 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 get everything ready

for sulphur fumigation?

- Any idea what causes foulbrood?

- Bacteria. It's highly infectious.

No idea where you got it,

maybe from foreign bees.

I'm so sorry. Rotten luck for you.

We drive south,

to Shanxi Province, by car.

It's about 1300 miles.

It takes us two days and two nights,

two drivers take turns driving.

That's a lot of distance to cover.

As soon as we get to the south,

we rent a big room to dry the flowers.

When the flowering period

in the south begins

we buy flowers from the farmers.

As soon as we have the flowers,

we start processing them.

We have a refrigerator in the car.

On the way back north, we connect it

when we stop for a break.

It helps to preserve

the pollen's fertility.

When the flowering period starts

here in the north,

we sell the pollen powder to farmers.

- Hello, I have the new pollen supplies.

- Hello!

Are two ounces enough?

There isn't very much pollen this year.

That's all I have now.

I'll contact you when I've sold these.

I take four yuan per packet,

but you can sell them for five.

One bundle, 50 packets, please check.

Pay when you can.

I'm sure you'll sell these fast.

Here. 15, 16,

17, 18...

The males don't sting.

See, I have it on my hand, and I'm fine.

- Is that the mummy bee?

- No, that's a daddy bee.

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.

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