































Multispecies Encounters

An Analysis of the film Bee Movie and 
Multispecies Theory

Lilly Elrod

• •  • •

 Multispecies theory is applicable to a mul-
titude of formats for analysis. In this 

essay, the film Bee Movie is analyzed for its purpose 
in multispecies studies and how it can be used to un-
derstand the function of the bee outside of the film. 
Multispecies theory suggests a new form of viewing 
the world, of being attentive to those around you 
that might not warrant a second thought, like an an-
noying bee buzzing around your head. It asks us to 
analyze the interactions we see around us on a day-
to-day basis and how the world functions around 
these interactions. This essay analyzes the interac-
tions in Bee Movie and how they might translate to 
real-life interactions made by bees. This essay ana-
lyzes how bees interact with the hive, flowers, and 
various other parts of the world around them in their 
daily lives and how these interactions shape not 
only the lives of humans, but other species as well.
 

©2024  Elrod. The Digital Literature Review, 11, 59-72. doi: 
10.33043/a76zdwqxz. Shared with CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Liscense.



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 The honeybee has been in countless headlines and topics of con-
versation, from concerns over the disappearance of bees to the 

unique way they communicate, honeybees are not only important to eco-
systems, but to culture in America. The western honeybee, Apis mellif-
era is a vital and well-studied insect, but what impact does it have on the 
world, and what has popular media said about this insect? Many forms 
of popular media center around the honeybee, from movies, to television 
shows, to works of art. A significant portion of this media is aimed toward 
education, whether in kids’ media or through documentaries about the im-
portance of the mighty honeybee. One of the most popular pieces of me-
dia from this genre is Bee Movie, released in 2007 and directed by Simon 
J. Smith and Steve Hickner. This is an infamous movie, with memes and 
jokes surrounding it spanning the last decade. While Bee Movie is a chil-
dren’s movie, it analyzes our world through a multispecies lens without 
meaning to. This movie showcases the interdependence and connectedness 
that links all living things on the planet together through the relationships 
that the common honeybee has with the world around it, whether it is the 
hive, flowers, or other animals and bugs. 
 The story of Bee Movie is a simple one: the protagonist, Barry B. 
Benson, terrified at the thought of working every day until he dies produc-
ing honey for the hive, ventures into the human world. Upon entry into the 
world, he discovers that humans use their hard-earned honey in their food, 
drinks, and body products. This outrages Barry to the point where he sues 
the human race for commandeering their honey, and he wins. All the hon-
ey that humans have taken is returned to the bees and, for the first time in 
twenty-seven million years, the bees stop making honey. This leads to all 
the plants in the world dying, and Barry having to come up with a clever 
way to save the planet, with the help of his human love interest, Vanessa. 
The day is saved, and Barry and Vanessa live happily ever after in their 
bee-human relationship. The way the movie shows how important even 
the smallest creature is to the dynamic of our society and ecosystem is a 
key tenant of multispecies theory. Thom van Dooren, Eben Kirksey, and 

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Ursula Münster, authors of “Multispecies Studies: Cultivating Arts of At-
tentiveness”, pose the question:Are all lively entities biological, or might a 
tornado, a stone, or a volcano be amenable to similar forms of immersion? 
What does it mean to live with others in entangled worlds of contingency 
and uncertainty? More fundamentally, how can we do the work of inhabit-
ing and co-constituting worlds well? 
 Bees are taken for granted in our world. They’re the little annoying 
bugs that buzz around us and scare our pants off because, what if we get 
stung? How do we determine what is important to each species, and how 
do we determine what is alive and what is not? Examining the dynamics 
of bees in Bee Movie allows us to view bees in a new light as well as ac-
knowledge the gaps of information present in the movie. 
 For some background into real-life honeybees, the western honey-
bee, Apis mellifera, is one of the most studied insects in the world (Wood 
1100). According to Britannica, the term “honeybee” can apply to any of 
the seven members of the genus “Apis-”, but is usually in reference to 
Apis mellifera. Honeybees are extremely social creatures with a unique 
form of communication—they dance. Honeybees are the main pollinator 
for most flowering plants in natural and agricultural ecosystems (Danforth 
R 156). The importance of honeybees cannot be understated. According to 
Brianna Randall in her article “The Value of Birds and Bees,” honeybees 
pollinate up to eighty percent of all flowering plants, and up to one hun-
dred and thirty types of fruits and vegetables. In Donna Haraway’s When 
Species Meet, she writes:

Ms. Cayenne Pepper continues to colonize all my cells—a sure case 
of what the biologist Lynn Margulis calls symbiogenesis. I bet if 
you were to check our DNA, you’d find some potent transfections 
between us. Her saliva must have the viral vectors. Surely, her dart-
er-tongue kisses have been irresistible. Even though we share place-
ment in the phylum of vertebrates, we inhabit not just different gen-
era and divergent families but altogether different orders (15) 

In this passage, Haraway is talking about her pet, Ms Cayenne Pepper, 
and how by existing together, surely their bodies share cells after so much 

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time together. As I sit here, I think about all the tea sweetened with hon-
ey that I’ve consumed in my life–all the honey straws bought at fairs and 
festivals. After eating their life source, their sole sustenance in the world 
over years and years, how much do I have in common with a bee? If you 
look at my biology, at all that I’ve consumed, how close am I to a honey-
bee—or any animal? I’ve lived with my cat for thirteen years now–over 
half of my life. How much of me is her, and how much of her is me? And, 
truthfully, how much does it matter? The labels we as humans put on ev-
erything, the way we explain our existence, is meaningless in the study 
of multispecies theory. It is all a way for humans to label and explain the 
world we inhabit. Multispecies theory tries to find a way to give those we 
deem “lesser” or “non-sentient” a voice. 
 Multispecies theory challenges us to change the way we think about 
our day-to-day interactions with non-humans. We must analyze what 
it means to be a bee in a world where the function of the bee has been 
changed by human interference and how that changes how the world 
works. Jordan Luttrell in their essay “Knowing the Honey bee: A Multi-
species Ethnography” says, “The honey bee is commonly known as an in-
troduced, domesticated species, kept by humans in beehives in apiculture. 
This conceals the agency of the honey bee, rendering it passive, productive 
and compliant to the desires of humans, or in need of human intervention 
for survival” (4). The bee is no longer a free agent. Instead, the bee has 
been domesticated for commercial use by humans. The relationship be-
tween bees has changed, and so has their relationship with the surrounding 
environment. Luttrell continues with: 
 Recent scholarship argues that non-humans do not just exist in the 
world, they are unruly agents which experience the world in particular 
ways. This scholarship has opened pathways of inquiry that explore how 
we know and engage with non-humans, and how modes of knowing and 
engaging shape them (11). Honeybees used to roam wild in the woods, 
cultivating honey as their sole food source. Honey is their lifeline—it is 
their entire life, essentially, boiled down into one substance. The impor-
tance of honey is an essential part of the plot for Bee Movie, as the com-

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mandeering of honey by humans is the motivation Barry B. Benson needs 
to sue the entire human race for stealing their honey.  
 There is much that we do not understand about the honeybee. For in-
stance, bees have been experiencing rapid declines in numbers for decades 
now. Much research has gone into what is causing their rapid decline, and 
several culprits have been identified. In an article by Jessica Robbins titled 
“Bees in the Balance,” the phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disor-
der (CCD) is explored, which is a condition where bees seem to disappear 
or die out of nowhere, leaving a colony in disarray. Robbins details that 
“[w]ithin six months of its first appearance, Colony Collapse Disorder had 
claimed the lives of up to 80 percent of the nation’s honeybees, and there 
was still no clear explanation for the disorder in sight” (2) CCD is a truly 
disturbing phenomenon and one that has required a lot of research. There 
is still no answer as to what causes CCD, but cases of the disorder have 
dwindled over the years (“Colony Collapse Disorder”). The truth is that 
humans could very well face the daunting conflict in Bee Movie where the 
flowering plants in the world see a massive decline because of the loss of 
bees. 
 Before diving into an analysis of the movie, I took a look at how the 
public felt about the movie. Some reviews are scathing, considering this 
movie to be a retelling of already famous movies. A review on IMDB from 
RiffRaffMcKinley says “...the movie was basically a rehash of movies 
like “A Bug’s Life” and “Antz,” both of which were very good movies in 
which insects dreamed of a better life and had the fortitude to make it hap-
pen. That sentence should be its own genre by now!” But other reviews 
are in favor of Bee Movie, such as this one from Gordon-11 on IMDB that 
says “...to look at the world with a bee’s perspective is interesting. I also 
liked the morals of the story, especially Vanessa’s line about all lives are 
equal.” Bee Movie is an infamous part of the culture in America, especially 
among the youth, so I was not surprised when I met with exaggerated re-
views of the movie, one IMDB user calling it “The ‘Citizen Kane’ of bug 
movies.” While the jury of public opinion is still out on whether or not this 
film can be considered a “good movie”, there are also professional review-

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ers to take into account. Roger Ebert says “All of this material, written 
by Seinfeld and writers associated with his television series, tries hard, 
but never really takes off.” Ebert is not a fan of the movie and the humor 
throughout, which is the main draw of the movie, not its multispecies ap-
plications. The critic consensus on Rotten Tomatoes says “Bee Movie has 
humorous moments, but its awkward premise and tame delivery render 
it mostly forgettable.” Sitting at a solid fifty percent on Rotten Tomatoes, 
the critics there are also not fans of the humor in the movie, but the humor 
isn’t the center of this paper, the multispecies interactions are. 
 There were two scenes that particularly stood out to me when watch-
ing this movie. The first scene that grabbed my attention was the first 
scene of the movie (00:02:21). Barry and his best friend, Adam, arrive at 
their “college” graduation after completing three days of grade school, 
three days of high school, and three days of college. They graduate, and 
are immediately moved on to Honex Industries, where the hive works tire-
lessly to make honey. The seats they were sitting in are transformed into 
a trolley to take them through the factory, a seamless and efficient transi-
tion for a hive that is constantly pumping out more and more worker bees. 
Barry and Adam are excited to begin this journey, as making honey is all 
they’ve ever been told to do. It’s their sole purpose in life. The music is 
happy, even a little inquisitive. Barry and Adam are constantly talking to 
each other, sharing their excitement, their eyes full of hope for the future. 
As they enter the factory, Barry proclaims “This is it!” and a collective 
“Wow!” travels through the group as the doors open and the honey fac-
tory is presented to them. The music picks up, climaxing for a dramatic 
entrance into their future. The factory is whimsical, with nonsense ma-
chines and mechanisms for making honey to appeal to the children in the 
audience. There’s even a device called the “krelman” that has bees wear-
ing hats that look like fingers spinning on a wheel that “catches that little 
strand of honey that hangs after you pour.” and deposits it back into the 
honey collection. Adam is particularly intrigued by this job, he lurches 
from his seat and desperately asks “Can anyone work on the Krelman?” 
to which the tour guide answers “Of course, most bee jobs are small ones, 

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but bees know that every small job, if it’s done well, means a lot.” This is 
a sentiment repeated throughout the movie, about how each working bee, 
no matter how insignificant, is a working cog in the machine that is the 
hive. The hive can be seen as another species when looking at multispe-
cies interactions. The hive exists because the bees create it to house and 
produce their honey. The hive houses the bees, and the bees keep up main-
tenance on it so they can continue to live and produce honey. Thom van 
Dooren et al. wrote “And so, beyond mere survival, particular lifeways in 
all their resplendent diversity emerge from interwoven patterns of living 
and dying, of being and becoming, in a larger world.” Creating the hive 
is a form of survival, the bees must do it, but once the hive is completed, 
there is a clear cut relationship between the two in which they need each 
other, and thus their relationship is born. 
 A beehive is an entire, living, breathing mechanism. It has incredi-
ble complexities that are a small wonder. An example of this comes from 
some small witty dialogue at this juncture, with Adam at one point calling 
another bee “hot” (00:05:02) and Barry saying “But she’s your cousin.” 
and Adam going “She is?” and Barry proclaiming “Yes! We’re all cous-
ins!”  Which, on some level, is true, as the bees within the colony do not 
reproduce with each other. The queen bee will mate with drone bees, and 
will mate with about ten to twenty drones at once, in a process that usually 
kills the drone (“How Honeybees Reproduce”). Another fascinating fact 
about the birth of honeybees is that the queen bee chooses the sex of the 
eggs. If she chooses to fertilize it, it will become a worker bee or a queen. 
If not, the egg becomes a drone (“How Honeybees Reproduce”). Honey-
bees have very complicated and fascinating hive dynamics and anatomy 
that Bee Movie barely scratches the surface of. Viewing the honeybee 
through Bee Movie waters down the truth of the everyday existence of 
the honeybee, imbuing it with human struggles and morals. Specifically 
this scene where the bees tour the “factory” and Barry faces his existen-
tial dread. Bees do not have existential dread, they are animals with a very 
specific purpose and they function in amazing ways throughout the hive. 
While the movie is entertaining to young children, there are very obvious 

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faults that can be found within the multispecies application of the movie. 
The movie doesn’t fully appreciate the true hive dynamics, as well as the 
real relationship between bees and flowers. These gaps have to be filled in 
with knowledge the audience may or may not have. 
 As the scene progresses, things take a turn for the worse. After dis-
cussing the Krelman, the tour guide says “But choose carefully, because 
you’ll stay in the job that you pick for the rest of your life.” (00:05:57). 
While the other bees say “Ooh” and smile at each other, Barry’s face falls. 
He doesn’t want to work at the same job for the rest of his life. This is a 
horrible realization for him that spurs the conflict for the rest of the mov-
ie. The tour guide goes on to say that “…bees as a species haven’t had 
one day off in over twenty-seven million years.” to which Barry responds 
“So you’ll just work us to death?” to which she responds “We’ll sure try!”  
which gets laughs from the rest of the bees. This is the worst news that 
Barry could get. Barry is a bee that needs diversity and freedom, not to 
work at the same job until he dies. Of course this is an anthropomorphic 
bee that has human ideologies imprinted upon him, and this isn’t how real 
bees feel, just how Jerry Seinfeld wanted him to feel. The human-centric 
feelings of living in what feels like a never-ending cycle of being taken 
advantage of by capitalists being imprinted onto a bee isn’t the best lens 
for multispecies studies, but it’s a great way to relate to the character and 
to understand how he’s feeling and why he does what he does later in the 
film. This leads to the multispecies interactions later in the film. 
 The second scene that drew my attention is later in the film. This 
scene is an integral part of the film–it’s the first time Barry leaves the hive. 
Earlier in the film pollen jocks (the only bees who leave the hive to collect 
nectar) invite Barry to leave the hive with them, and he takes them up on 
their invitation. The pollen jocks look different from the rest of the bees. 
They’re bigger in every way. They’re taller, their upper body is larger, 
and they have bigger wings. Barry is hiding behind what appears to be a 
storage station for the guns they use to collect the nectar, talking to Adam 
through his antennae like a phone (00:12:15). He says he has to go out 
there before he works every day for the rest of his life, but Adam doesn’t 

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think it’s a good idea, he says it’s too dangerous. Barry hangs up on Adam 
and tentatively ventures to the pollen jock formation. The bee in charge, 
a caricature of an air force sergeant, tells Barry that the flight deck is re-
stricted and he needs to leave, but the other pollen jocks speak up for him 
and say that he’s good to go out with them. Barry promptly signs a few 
waivers, and that is that. He’s ready to hit the skies. The sergeant gives us 
some foreshadowing by mentioning that it’s supposed to rain that day, and 
that bees absolutely cannot fly in the rain. Barry looks nervous the entire 
time he’s on the flight deck. He has incredibly expressive eyes, and every 
emotion he’s feeling is portrayed in them. This is a situation he isn’t com-
fortable with. It’s a completely new, and dangerous, situation for him to be 
in, but he knows that he needs to leave his comfort zone and find out for 
himself what the outside world looks like. 
 As the sergeant is running down some cautions for the pollen jocks, 
he reminds everyone of bee rule number one: absolutely no talking to hu-
mans. Now, it’s time to enter launch positions. The pollen jocks all march 
together, chanting “buzz” over and over again as they march into forma-
tion around Barry. Barry still looks absolutely terrified, and very confused 
about what’s going on around him. The camera pulls out to show that the 
pollen jocks formed three arrows, with Barry in the center one. They pull 
down their glasses, and the sergeant bellows “Black and yellow!” and 
the jocks respond “Hello!” while they hop in the air. This is a common 
chant throughout the movie, but the meaning of it isn’t ever disclosed. 
The bees all get down into a runners position, hands on the floor and one 
knee cocked. One pollen jock asks Barry “You ready for this, hot shot?” 
and Barry says “Yeah. Yeah, bring it on.” in a very weak, unenthusiastic 
way. He is absolutely terrified, and it’s written all over his face. The jocks 
go through various checks, just like air force pilots. At the end of their 
checks, Barry says “Scared out of my shorts, check.” Other bees come on 
the platform and start up the wings of the jocks, like revving the engine of 
a car to get it ready. They pull stops out from behind the feet of the jocks, 
tying more illusions in that the pollen jocks are like real planes. The music 
tempo begins to pick up here, as does the volume. Something really big is 

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about to happen. Barry starts to look more enthusiastic as he stares into the 
opening of the hive. The camera pans to the back of the pack, and it’s time 
for takeoff. 
 The bees pour out of the hive and the music crescendos. It’s time to 
enter a brand new world. They fly out into the world in perfect forma-
tion, weaving between the branches of the tree that holds their home. The 
tree that holds their home is at least several decades old. It has weathered 
all kinds of seasons and the construction of the city around it. The funny 
thing is, this hive would not exist without this tree, and yet it gets no ap-
preciation from the bees that live on it. A majority of the bees within the 
hive will never actually see the tree, they will just continue on with their 
lives within the hive, doing their small part to make the hive work with-
out a second thought about the tree, and yet the pollen jocks must weave 
through its branches every day to retrieve the nectar that keeps the hive 
alive (00:14:14). This is the first multispecies interaction out of many 
within this scene. Once they leave the tree, they burst into the sunlight 
and Barry’s eyes widen as he takes in the view of the park that they live 
in (00:14:21). Barry and the pollen jocks weave through the multicolored 
kites being flown by the children and adults below. The kites take various 
forms, from the traditional and rectangular, to those shaped like insects. 
The bees dive and fly among the bikers in the park, observing everything 
that they can. They fly under a bridge and find the flowers they were look-
ing for. One of the pollen jocks lowers his glasses and sees that some of 
the flowers are ready to have their nectar harvested. The guns the pollen 
jocks use to collect the nectar are very whimsical, with multiple tubes that 
shoot out to enter the centers of the flower and then suck up the nectar to 
be collected into the gun (00:15:24).
 The greatest multispecies interaction of all in this movie is between 
honeybees and flowers. This is a true symbiotic relationship as one can-
not survive without the other. When collecting nectar from a flower, bees 
get pollen on them. The next time they land on a flower, some of that 
pollen shakes off of them and pollinates that flower, and so on and so 
forth. Collecting the nectar from the flowers fuels the bees quite literal-

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ly, and the pollination from the bees moving from flower to flower keeps 
the flowers reproducing. Without one or the other, the suffering that these 
species would suffer would be insurmountable. Thus is the entire plot of 
the movie, the bees stop pollinating and all the plants die, and then when 
the bees run out of honey, what would they do? Van Dooren et al. contin-
ued in their paper with “The intimate relationship between a flower and 
its pollinating bee is one in which both forms of life are shaped and made 
possible through a shared heritage, an entanglement that Isabelle Stengers 
characterizes as “reciprocal capture.” As such, they do not just happen to 
meet each other, this bee and this flower; rather, their relationship emerges 
from coevolutionary histories, from rich processes of “co-becoming.” The 
honeybee and the flower share a rich history of survival together, through 
thousands–millions of generations. They are, essentially, one creature be-
cause they cannot exist without the other. As stated earlier, the movie does 
not fully capture the true complexities of the multispecies interactions that 
bees are a part of every day. This is a major shortfall of this film, but that’s 
to be expected in a children’s movie about anthropomorphic bees with 
human morals and problems. The movie doesn’t fully capture the “co-be-
coming” of bees and flowers, the rich history these two species have with 
each other. There are a lot of shortcomings when it comes to this film, but 
it is a great starting point to examine multispecies interactions in film and 
the shortcomings the films may have. Examining these films leads to ex-
amining our everyday life, reconsidering how we experience the world 
around us, and how the world around us experiences life. 
 Multispecies interactions run our day-to-day lives. Every interaction 
we have is meaningful, and many different organisms and species work 
together to produce the environment we live in each day. The honey that 
we use in our tea was the result of the combined effort of hundreds of 
different bees, all working in harmony to produce our honey, beeswax, 
propolis, and royal jelly. Without the common honeybee, Apis mellifera, 
our world would look vastly different, or, human life would cease to exist 
on this planet. Honeybees work together with their hives and a multitude 
of different flowering plants to produce products that we take for granted, 

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as shown in Bee Movie. Multispecies theory has us analyze our world in 
a different light by immersing ourselves in our surrounding environment, 
and asking how each interaction shapes our world as well as the world for 
those around us, and Bee Movie is a fun and entertaining way to analyze 
that mindfulness. 

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Works Cited

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by Jerry Seinfeld,Renée Zellweger, Matthew Broderick, Patrick 
Warburton, and John Goodman, Paramount Pictures, 2007. 

“Bee Movie.” IMDb, IMDb.com, 2 Nov. 2007, www.imdb.com/title/
tt0389790/.  

“Colony Collapse Disorder | US EPA - U.S. Environmental Protection 
Agency.” Epa.Gov, 2023, www.epa.gov/pollinator-protection/colony-
collapse-disorder.  

Danforth, Bryan. “Bees.” Current Biology, vol. 17, no. 5, 2007, pp. 
R156-R161.

Ebert, Roger. “Bee Movie Movie Review & Film Summary (2007): 
Roger Ebert.” Bee Movie Movie Review & Film Summary (2007) | 
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off%2C%20she%20could.  

Haraway, Donna Jeanne. “Introductions.” When Species Meet, University 
of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, 2007, pp. 1–42.  

“Honeybee.” Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Britannica, inc., 20 
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“How Honeybees Reproduce.” PerfectBee, 13 Feb. 2024, www.perfectbee.
com/learn-about-bees/the-science-of-bees/how-honeybees-reproduce.  

Lutrell, Jordan. Knowing the Honey bee: A Multispecies Ethnography. 
2017. Massey University, 

Ostiguy, Nancy. “Pests and Pollinators.” Nature News, Nature 
PublishingGroup, 2011, www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/
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200%2C000%20species,%2C%20solitary%20bees%2C%20and%20
wasps.  

Randall, Brianna. “The Value of Birds and Bees.” Farmers.
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bees#:~:text=Honey%20bees%20alone%20pollinate%20
80,types%20of%20fruits%20and%20vegetables.  

Robbins, Jessica. “Bees in the Ballance.” Berkeley Scientific Journal, vol. 
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Seinfeld, Jerry, et al. “Bee Movie.” Rotten Tomatoes, 2 Nov. 2007, www.
rottentomatoes.com/m/bee_movie.  

van Dooren, Thom, Eben Kirksey, Ursula Münster; Multispecies Studies: 
Cultivating Arts of Attentiveness. Environmental Humanities, 1 May 
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Wood, T.J., Michez, D., Paxton, R.J. et al. “Managed honey bees as a radar 
for wild bee decline?”Apidologie 51, 1100–1116 (2020). https://doi.
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