City of Wax1934

The Woodard brothers won an Academy Award® for this documentary short illustrating the complex world of bees who've found "a hollow tree in which to build a city," as Gayne Whitman's narration puts it. The siblings' microscopic camera captures the society of male drones, sterile female workers and egg-laying queen (who one day will be "dethroned" by a younger model) as they fertilize flowers, create honey and guard the latter from "robber bees" among their own ranks. Birth, work, work, work, death; it's not a life to be greatly envied within the animal kingdom. One of relatively few films from the Educational Pictures studio that could actually be called "educational," it got its Oscar nod in the long-gone "Best Short Subject, Novelty" (as opposed to "Comedy" or "Cartoon") category. - Dennis Harvey