Last summer I moved to Boston area and I was busy enjoying its variety of offerings, e.g. concerts, festivals, startup events while exploring restaurants and museums. This year, with Covid-19, a different summer, I’m finding alternatives online…
I came across Honeyland, a documentary about Hatidže Muratova, a wild bee keeper’s life in the remote mountain village. Hatidže has no family but an ill and bedridden mom. She has no access to electricity and running water and makes a living by selling honey in Skopje, 4 hours away from the village. She has no neighbor until a nomadic family arrived. Hatidže teaches Sam, the dad about beekeeping/ starting his own colony and plays with the children. The initial success and increasing demand of honey from Sam’s customer blinded him to disregard’s Hatidže’s advice to leave half of the honey for the bees and sold the entire stock of honey. This led to Sam’s bees to attack Hatidže’s and killed them during the resource-scarce winter. She protested with him but he denied the cause. She moved her bees away and rebuilt the colony with the tree trunk by the river but later saw that tree was cut-open and honey were stolen by Sam and his customer. She was left bee-less. If this was not bad enough, her mother died and Sam’s family moved away, Hatidže is left totally alone.
At the closing scene, Hatidže was at the top of the snowy mountain, ‘miraculously’, she pulled a piece of bee hive from the crack of stone wall and her dog happily licked the honey…there is always hope!