Calla’s Corner
Nick Wigle, the owner of Super Bee Rescue, is known as the Doctor Dolittle of Bees (Photo credit: Super Bee Rescue)
by Calla Jones
The Film About Local Beekeepers That is Causing a Buzz
A
lthough there is still a dispute over whether it was Napoleon or Adam Smith who coined the phrase “The British are a nation of shopkeepers,” there is no dispute that beekeepers in Santa Barbara want to convince us that America is a “nation of beekeepers.” The Beelievers, a short documentary made by UCSB graduate filmmaker Leah Bleich and released at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, follows several Santa Barbara beekeepers who are doing just that. Discussing the origins of the film during a SBIFF Film Talk on August 13, Bleich said the idea for making the film came while she was a junior at UCSB. She needed a subject for a green screen class. When she was home for spring break she stumbled on a bee swarm in a backyard tree. “When a beekeeper arrived, all suited up with his gear and treated the swarm gently, I saw his passion and that sparked the idea to do a film about bee conservationists in Santa Barbara,” she said. One of the beekeepers interviewed in the 15-minute film is Nick Wigle, the 38-year-old owner of Super Bee Rescue and Removal. Wigle, who is known around Santa Barbara and Montecito as the Doctor Dolittle of Bees because he talks to bees and is trying to save bees, one at a time if necessary. Wigle calls himself a “beevangelist” and doesn’t mind if he’s also called a “Bee Guru” or “Bee Whisperer.” “I just want to be called to save bees,” said the soft-spoken crusader. “Bees are cows with wings. If you get to know them, you will see they are cuddly.” Wigle said there was a worldwide threat to the bee population.
Leah Bleich got the idea for making Beelievers while she was a junior at UCSB
From pesticides, varroa mites, CCD (Colony Disorder Collapse), exterminating instead of rescuing, climate change, and general ignorance about how the earth needs bees to pollenate our food and how essential they are to conservation, the task he has with other beekeepers is a challenging one. This spring did not see the exceptional blooming of flowers that bees gorged upon, following the 2019 winter torrential rains. Now with a statewide drought and fires engulfing so much of bee territory, the bees are very stressed and fighting for every last bit of pollen. Wigle recently posted on Instagram a video of him up a ladder, clad in a Tyvek suit with gloves, rescuing thousands of angry bees. “It sure was hot,” he wrote, although he often does not wear protective gear. “Standing on a ladder in the sun, working with some
very pissy bees adds another layer. Yep these bees made me put on a suit and gloves.” Wigle said bees could know whether they were being helped, emitting a scent that told him whether they were angry or happy. He said Super Bee Rescue was the only company in Santa Barbara that would climb ladders or go into a forklift to rescue colonies that were high up in trees or roofs. Recently, the giant Asian hornet, aka the “Murder Hornet,” made its way across the Canadian border into Seattle. “I’m not looking forward to getting rid of a nest of these buggers,” he said. The two-inch honeybee-eating insect can travel 20 miles an hour, devour a beehive in an hour, and carries a deadly stinger that can penetrate bee suits.
The ‘Bee-Too Movement’ Although Juanita Collins is not in the film, she is teaching a bee course for the Santa Barbara Bee Association with the help of Zoom. The charming Montecito beekeeper has a delightful way of describing how she got interested in beekeeping, often talking to the hives as she flits around her garden, asking how they’re doing, pointing out what certain bees are doing, how a bee becomes the Queen bee, how her worker bees keep her clean and feed her, how the Queen mates with a drone while flying, killing the drone. She chuckled, “You could call this a ‘Bee-Too’ movement.” Then she asked me whether I knew that the venom of Australian honeybees appeared to destroy a certain type of breast cancer cells.
The Bee Lady of Montecito, Juanita Collins teaches a course for the Santa Barbara Bee Association and she’s getting her master’s in beekeeping from the University of Montana (Photo credit: Calla Jones)
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32 MONTECITO JOURNAL
“Never raise your hand to your kids. It leaves your groin unprotected.” - Red Buttons
10 – 17 September 2020
