If everything you knew about bees came from Jerry Seinfeld’s Bee Movie, you wouldn’t be too bad off. It isn’t just a crazy (and pretty darn funny) animated ride. It also squeezes in bee facts and makes a strong and generally accurate statement about the honey-makers’ vital role in nature. But the movie did take a few liberties. Here’s what Seinfeld said—and what really happens in bee world.

Bees don’t fly in the rain.
Basically true. Honeybees generally avoid rain. A wet bee is a heavy bee and could easily drown in a small puddle. Although some bees (mason orchard bees, for example) aren’t as put off by water, honeybees tend to head back to the hive in anything more than light drizzle. Score one for Bee Movie.

Each honeybee keeps the same job for life.
Not too far off. A bee may keep the same job a long time (and the queen keeps her gig for life—two or three years in the wild, a year in a commercial bee operation). And there are bees with very specialized jobs, like fanning the queen or carrying off bee corpses from the hive. But it isn’t quite as simple as one bee, one job. Living months if they overwinter or mere weeks if born in the summer, most workers progress through a series of jobs that get more and more sophisticated. They might go from cleaning combs to feeding larvae to nectar and pollen production. During mid-life, some become guard bees, protecting the hive from robber bees and parasites. Meanwhile, the movie hints that a career may be passed down from father to offspring—a genetic phenomenon that’s actually been documented. Bet the filmmakers had no idea!

Big manly “pollen jocks” do all the pollen gathering.
Ok, try pollen jockettes. While drones that mate with the queen are, obviously, male, all worker honeybees are female. The movie doesn’t even try to get that right. Substitute Janeane Garofalo for Jerry Seinfeld, perhaps, and you’d have something.

Honeybees will fly six miles to a food source.
Not typically. There are reports of seven-mile flights, but most honeybees stay within about a two-mile radius of the hive. So … not incorrect, but perhaps a little misleading.

Bees have been around 27 million years.
Try again. The oldest known bee was discovered last year in Burma, embedded in amber: It’s a whopping 100 million years old. Bee fossils have been dated to 65 million years back. Perhaps the film was referring specifically to the honeybee genus Apis, which is indeed thought to be around 25 million years old.

Beekeepers are villains who steal honey from slave bees.
Ok, let the filmmakers have their fun. But I must say the beekeepers I’ve met have great respect for their charges and treat them quite well (although trucking bees from place to place to pollinate crops is no doubt a stressful ride).

If honeybees stop working, all the flowers and trees go kaput.
Honeybees are major pollinators but others pitch in: different types of bees, birds, butterflies. Still, honeybees have an unmatched role in crop pollination—a point made headlines in the last two years with their massive die-offs due to an ailment called “Colony Collapse Disorder,” caused at least in part by a new virus. So the movie’s message, which you absolutely can’t miss (it is written for kids, after all), is especially relevant: We need these little guys. Badly. Quit swatting (it only makes them mad) and spraying and start appreciating all that bees do for us.

I’d give the movie an A for entertainment, and—what else—a B for education.

-Jennifer S. Holland

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