School alumni produces song, music video to save honey bees

“Shake your stingers and bend your knees, get down real low.” If those lyrics sound suggestive, try listening to this: “Help the bees get busy and do the honey bee!”

Connor Lanman ’09, and his family created a YouTube video early this school year called “Do the Honey Bee!” that was used in a Haagen Dazs campaign for National Bee Awareness Day. Haagen Dazs contacted the Lanman’s after reading Connor’s book “Plight of the Bee,” a children’s book explaining the loss of bees.

The point of the video is to help promote saving the bees since their population is diminishing. According to Haagen Dazs’ website, “Haagen Dazs loves Honey Bees, bees are accountable for one-third of all of our food supplies.” The point may seem legitimate and pertinent but after watching the video “Do the Honey Bee!” it may seem more like a ridiculous commercial than a public service advertisement.

The rap-themed video starts with a slow-motion entrance of Connor dressed in a bee-keeper’s outfit followed by a posse of “bees.” The bees are 10 of the Lanmans’ closest friends and family dressed in bee costumes complete with antennae. The bees are all wearing sunglasses to try to up their intimidation factor. Since they are trying to look tough and “gangster” but are wearing fat bee costumes and floppy antennae hats, it is not convincing.

The video then proceeds to attempt to make its point by explaining the detriments of losing bees: “no more sweets, ice cream and no more honey/ no more veggies and fruit/…/naw that just ain’t funny.” The video then skips to the awkwardly catchy chorus where the bees “shake their stingers and bend their knees” so that they can “get down real low and do the honey bee.”

Then the video takes on a whole new level of absurdity. A Rasta-rapper takes the stage and sings reggae. In case all the severity of this cause had not already been lost, they also added bee smokers to imitate drug use in rap videos.

It may be hard to believe, but the Lanmans are not the first to make one of these bee movies. Haagen Dazs promotes the dancing bee videos, having featured videos on their website. In the intro to “Do the Honey Bee!” an explanation is given as to why these bees are dancing.

“Bees perform a series of moves known as the ‘waggle dance’ to let their hive mates know the distance, quality and quantity of a newly found food supply,” the Lanmans said in their video introduction.

The video is catchy and cute, but at times it just makes the viewer want to groan. Moments of it are reminiscent of Bill Nye videos, where everything is just too juvenile to respect.

Although the Lanmans do a good job of bustin’ a rhyme, the video is well produced and can be ridiculously amusing at times, it does not seriously convey the plight of the bees. The humor and lack of severity toward the topic of saving the bees might have been entertaining but not quite convincing.