Economics at the Movies- where have all the bees gone?

‘Vanishing of the Bees’ is a documentary film that ties in both economics and agriculture is out now in the UK, and on DVD. A potentially great resource for microeconomics and getting students to consider a genuine, current, and actually quite alarming topic.

‘Vanishing of the Bees’ is a documentary film exploring the nature of a problem known as ‘colony collapse disorder’ (CCD). It has the potential to devastate agricultural production not just in the UK but in many countries around the world, as bees are essential to the pollination of many food crops. There’s also a lot of economics involved- just think about what would happen if there were significant reductions in the supply of many major crops. We’ve already had riots in several developing countries over rises in just a few key foods over the last few years. As students are required to know about agricultural markets and can be given such case studies in exams, I intend to use this DVD along with this exam paper, helpfully adapted from an old past paper, to test my students’ knowledge of some key concepts and also introduce them to a complete data-response question for the first time. If you can’t access TES Resources and/or would like like a markscheme to go with this, drop me an email at davidcarol4@btopenworld.com.