In an effort to promote World Bee Day and bring attention to the need for enhancement of bee protections, actress Angelina Jolie posed for a National Geographic photoshoot covered in bees.
The actress can be seen with bees crawling on her as she stood perfectly still for eighteen minutes in order to capture the shot. Jolie posed for the picture in order to bring awareness to bee protection and “to a UNESCO-Guerlain program that trains women as beekeeper-entrepreneurs and protectors of native bee habitats around the world,” per National Geographic.
Discussing the experience of taking a photo while covered in bees, Jolie said, “I’m going to sound like my Buddhist practices, but it just felt lovely to be connected to these beautiful creatures. There’s certainly a hum. You have to be really still and in your body, in the moment, which is not easy for me.”
The photo was inspired by a famous picture taken of a beekeeper forty years ago. Photographer Dan Winters found the same pheromone used in 1981 to get the bees to come to the beekeeper and used it for Jolie’s shoot.
Jolie said, “It was so funny to be in hair and makeup and wiping yourself with pheromone. We couldn’t shower for three days before. Because they told me, ‘If you have all these different scents, shampoos and perfumes and things, the bee doesn’t know what you are.’ [They] don’t want [bees] to confuse you for a flower, I suppose.”
Jolie added that she had to put things in her nose and ears in order to prevent the bees from climbing inside.
Bees have been at risk of extinction in recent years due to various reasons. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the total number of managed honey bee colonies was around 5 million in the 1940s. According to a 2020 report, “Honey bee colonies for operations with five or more colonies in the United States” were at a total of 2.88 million colonies. This amount was up 8 percent, however, in 2020 from 2019.
Jolie said, “Pollinators of course are extremely vital to our life and our environment. And so we have to understand scientifically what happens if we lose them. This is something we can work to solve.”
“What’s exciting to me is that instead of stepping forward and saying, ‘We are losing the bees, we have certain species that have gone extinct, are going extinct,’ we’re coming forward to say, ‘Yes, this is how you have to protect.’ You have to be more conscious of chemicals and deforestation. But also, here are things different people can do. You don’t even have to have land, but you can consider being a part of the solution. What’s exciting is that we’re coming at this with solutions [and] empowering women in their livelihoods.”
Jolie added, “Young people are so educated, so aware. They are so conscious of the problems facing the world they live in. And they’re being told to buy this or do this or don’t touch that or don’t drive that. They’re overwhelmed. So one of the things we want to do is make this possible and simple [to protect bees and biodiversity].”
Jolie went on to discuss climate change and the future, saying that her children are “certainly growing up much more informed.”
She said, “Listen, it’s down to their generation. We’re at the wire. Decisions made and things that we do in the next 10, 20 years are going to make or break the way we’re able to live on this planet. Sadly, they know that. That’s very hard for them. I can’t imagine being a little kid again. Whether the Earth will be able to exist in the same way, and whether there will be bees and pollination, was not something I was thinking about at 12 years old.”
Jolie discussed different types of women in the interview, as well, saying:
There are two types of bees. This is to all you women: wild and solitary or domestic and honeybee. Take a choice. The domestic honeybee is the one that makes the honey and then there’s this other bee, that’s the wild solitary bee th lives a very different life and does not make honey but pollinates.
[Interviewer]: So which kind are you?
[Jolie]: I feel like lately I’ve been a lot of domestic honeybee, but in my heart, I’m wild solitary. [Laughter]
Jolie will join the first 10 Women for Bees to participate in a quick 30-day training with experts at the French Observatory of Apidology in Provence, where she will be trained in the skill of beekeeping, as well.
View the photo of Jolie here.