Colony

"We admire some documentaries for their artistry and others for their urgency. Rarely do we see a film that combines both of these qualities as impressively as this debut by directors Carter Gunn and Ross McDonnell. Their unlikely topic is the world of beekeepers during the recent (and ongoing) crisis known as colony collapse disorder. Beautifully photographed by McDonnell and skilfully edited by Gunn, Colony follows several American beekeepers during 2008 and 2009 as the country's economy spiralled downward. Among them is David Hackenberg, who first identified colony collapse disorder when he mysteriously lost eighty million bees from his Florida hives. Many keepers blamed insecticides for killing more than one quarter of the bees in the.