Queen of the Sun won the Documentary Channel Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary Feature – Honorable Mention at the Nashville Film Festival.

Find out more about the film at Queenofthesun.com

Queen of the Sun had its first sneak-peek screening in Portland, Oregon to a packed house of bee enthusiasts, beekeepers and friends.  Thanks to everyone who came out to support the film.  The event served as a fundraiser for finishing funds as well as donations to Spikenard Bee Sanctuary. For more information please visit www.queenofthesun.com

~ Jeff Walberg,  the Mt. Vernon-Lisbon Sun

This is the opening paragraph from Jeff Walberg’s column about Taggart Siegel’s great fim, The Real Dirt on Farmer John. The column appeared in the Mt. Vernon-Lisbon Sun in Iowa.

You can read the full column here:

http://www.mtvernonlisbonsun.com/article.php?viewID=5260

 ·       Collective Eye is creating a Grassroots Grant Program to provide films to organizations for educational institutions and grassroots organizations.  This will help the filmmakers connect with people interesting in furthering their message, get paid for their work, and give engaged individuals and organizations a valuable tool for outreach, fundraising, etc.

·       Katrina Taylor stepped up the plate to head up Distribution as Cole Stamm moved on to his first loves of animation and writing.  Through Katrina’s efforts, Collective Eye has brought on many new films and connected with filmmakers worldwide.

·       Collective Eye Distribution began creating and collecting educational study guides to accompany films

·       Taggart will began Collective Eye’s “screening nights” to showcase films and promote discussion …. at  its centrally located Southeast Portland studios sometime this fall.

·       Queen of the Sun Documentary Film was in full production during 2008 and continues to post production in 2009.  Jon Betz was hired as Producer helped get the project going forward beautifully.

Taggart Siegel’s Queen of The Sun, an HD feature-length documentary, celebrates the renewal and reverence of honeybees.  The film is a creative exploration of the escalating global bee crisis. For 10,000 years bees have been a barometer of the health of the world, flying millions of miles to pollinate the earth, providing humans with honey, medicine and fuel. Now, however, they’re in a state of emergency.

The film follows heroes dedicated to the survival of bees, from ancient cultures to biodynamic communities. Queen delivers a cohesive message: people of the world must work collaboratively- as the bees themselves- in order to avoid the cataclysmic disappearance of these essential pollinators.

We cannot rely upon scientific strategies alone: doing that keeps us locked in the rationalistic framework that has produced many of our current problems.   The unfolding crisis requires philosophical insight and-heretofore unrecognized- voices to develop applications for change. Einstein was right: it’s impossible to solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created it.

http://www.ebertfest.com/

John and Taggart appeared on stage after the screening of The Real Dirt on Farmer John and spent about an hour discussing the film. They were joined by Ang Lee, Paul Schrader, Christine Lahti and other well known people in the film industry. The audience was so moved, they gave John and Taggart a standing ovation and many people were in tears as a result of the emotional impact of this wonderful film.  The Real Dirt on Farmer John seems to elicit very strong and positive emotions wherever it screens.  The Collective Eye Hive is very happy for our lads and the well-deserved recognition they received at this film festival.

Bees in America are under siege with pesticides, genetically engineered crops and over breeding the queen. Bees are a barometer species and are telling us something important. All around the world Beekeepers are helping maintain healthy ecosystems with the millions of bees pollinating plants. Without the bees, future generations will not be able to bite into a delicious apple, or smell the aroma of a spring flower.

My first stop on my bee journey was Kakoura, a beautiful coastal, mountainous area where some of the best whale watching occurs in the world. Nick, a gracious certified organic beekeeper from Mountain Honey, took me in his bee truck up a Maunka forested valley to check his hives and the honey flow. It was an amazing sensation being around thousands of bees swarming around you and not having to worry (with a bee suit) about being stung.

The next day I filmed Warren Thompson, a beekeeper and sculptor. Warren says, “Art is a spiritual activity and bees really help feed that. The art of bee keeping becomes an art, not the money…It’s wonderful the way bees work with wax. Bees are a living medium that becomes a metaphor for me working with art.”Warren lives in the the high country of Hanmer Hotsprings with his wife, Elisabeth and their three daughters. Elisabeth says, “Warren’s bee hives are all healthy and they’re all well looked after. We have little dances around the bee hives when the Maunka honey comes in.”Warren says he has a passion working with “a queen and a lot of female worker bees.” He has quite a rye sense of humor when I asked him about bee stings. “Bee stings are very good for arthritis. It has the same energy that pumps your heart, when you get a sting. It moves blood around the system so when you get a lot of stings you’re on edge because so much blood is being pumped around.” Warren started laughing as he went on about bee venom.“Bee venom is a formic acid. If you get too much formic acid it can make you a little crazy. Bee keepers as a whole have had too much of that acid and I think it’s made them a little crazy. Especially when you get a bunch of beekeepers together, they’re an interesting bunch. That’s what keeps beekeepers apart from other industries, because of the bee sting.”

During an interview with Warren he talked about his respect for bees. “I give thanks to bees by looking after them, by giving them a good environment and protecting them and revering their whole matriarchal system. I spend my time helping bees through the hard times coming up so the bees will get through this time and bring us this time again. I give thanks to bees that will be with me in this time so they could do their job and we can do our job.”Warren passionately says, “It’s about looking after the bees. I give back to the bees by not taking all their honey. Giving back to what they produce gives them strength. The bees will be a lot happier and the whole genetics and immune system are going to be looked after.

A positive step in the right direction is giving back to them what they produce –honey. Not giving back to bees the genetically engineered corn syrup that they do in America. All adding up to a problematic future if we keep feeding them unhealthy substances. The bees produce more than enough honey, so giving back some to them is going to be a very important part of me keeping going as a bee keeper.”

Only recently, beekeepers on the South Island have been threatened by varroa mites, which can devastate a hive and bee business. Warren is preparing for the inevitable varroa mites but he wants to make sure his bees are strong. “To get us through this hard time of varroa mites we really need to strengthen what’s natural to their system. Build up their system. Giving back to what they produce gives them strength. Not about changing a queen every 6 months. Letting the bees show us the direction. They’ll produce and develop a hive that is strong. A system that has been working since the Stone Age.”

After departing the East Coast I drove over Lewis Pass with my wife Jenny and my 3 year old daughter Olive to the West Coast of New Zealand to meet Big Hand Roy Arbon, a gentle bee keeper who fights for bee’s rights. He stated things with clarity and insight. “The bees are telling us something because of Colony Collapse Disorder-that the world is in a bad state and we’ve caused that and the bees are telling us that. The bees tell you exactly what’s happening. I think its genetically modified plants…we’re changing the structure of the plant, and the bees are dying because of it. What right do we have to modify a plant? We have no right. It’s because of the mighty dollar.”Roy went on why he’s a beekeeper. “I am a bee keeper because I love what I’m doing. I’m not polluting the world doing it. We are helping the world. We aren’t hurting anyone. We are learning so much from the bees.”