27
Sep
Celebrate 30 Years with Beyond Pesticides: Reception and film screening
(Beyond Pesticides, September 27, 2011) Beyond Pesticides invites you to join the our board of directors and staff to celebrate 30 years of protecting public health and the environment through science, policy and grassroots action on Thursday, October 27, 2011 in Washington, DC. We will be hosting our 30th Anniversary reception with live music and a screening of the award-winning film Vanishing of the Bees at 6:30 pm in the Langston Room at Busboys and Poets (14th and V Streets NW) in Washington, DC. Beekeepers featured in Vanishing of the Bees will introduce the film.
In recognition of our 30th anniversary and the important work that needs to be done to protect health and the environment –through the restriction of pesticides and the adoption of organic practices and policies– please plan to join us for this event and consider a donation between $30 and $3000. Donate and RSVP.
Beyond Pesticides was founded in 1981 as the National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides to effect change through local action, assisting individuals and community-based organizations to eliminate unnecessary toxic pesticide use, while promoting safer alternatives. The founders felt that without the existence of such an organized, national network, local, state and national pesticide policy would become, under chemical industry pressure, increasingly unresponsive to public health and environmental concerns.
About the Film
The crisis of colony collapse disorder (CCD) in the honeybee population is an increasingly widespread phenomenon of bees disappearing or abandoning their hives. Imagine half a million adults skipping town and leaving their children behind. Picture an opened suitcase filled with bundles of cash at a bus stop and yet no robber wants to snatch it. CCD displays these very symptoms. Not only do the bees abandon their hive, but the queen and the brood as well. Even the predators that usually raid the hive for honey stay far away. At first, this occurrence sounds like an urban legend or an exaggerated tale. It’s not. The situation is both dire and all too real. Bees are disappearing all over the planet and no one knows why.
Vanishing of the Bees takes a piercing investigative look at the economic, political and ecological implications of the worldwide disappearance of honeybees and empowers the audience to fight back. The film follows two commercial beekeepers as they strive to keep their bees healthy and fulfill pollination contracts across the U.S. The film explores the struggles they face as the two friends plead their case on Capitol Hill and travel across the Pacific Ocean in the quest to protect their honeybees.
For more information on protecting honey bees and other pollinators, see Beyond Pesticides Pollinator program page.
