Mechanical bees’ nest – coming soon to a dystopia near you?

I’m pretty fussy about the shows I catch. Unless they include bees – then I’ll watch almost anything. The folks over at the London School of Economics beekeeping site mentioned a British dystopian thriller, Black Mirror: Hated in the Nation. Not my usual choice, but when learned it had murderous robotic bees, developed by the British to replace extinct pollinators, I was on to it. 

He’ll bee OK.

So here’s the deal. Black Mirror is a series of futuristic dramas – loosely related episodes about some bad karma  hitting us a few years from now. I was unaware of the show until yesterday, but I’m glad I saw this particular installment (Hated in the Nation:  Season 3; Episode 6; released October 2016). The world’s honey bees have colony-collapsed, so an aseptic ag-company develops swarms of robotic drones (actually, workers, I should think), to pollinate  England’s legendary flower gardens. It apparently takes just 23,000 swarms (each of 4,000 mechanical bees) to do the job – but I’m guessing that the solar-powered robotic avatars work day and night and don’t mess with nectar – they just pollinate and pollinate. It wouldn’t be much of a show if things didn’t go badly wrong, but for that, you’ll have to watch it yourself.

This isn’t my normal movie fare, but I liked it quite a lot. Be aware that there are a handful of gore scenes and some colourful language, but if you’re a rugged adult and make a habit of peeking at bees, you can probably handle it. The backstory includes intriguing thoughts on the way bullies use social media to cause grief and it offers one fellow’s solution to the problem. Now playing on Netflix (at least here in Canada).

Tireless and no stinger: What could possibly go wrong?