WHEN 63-year-old Julian Wooten was growing up on his family's eastern North Carolina farm, he used to get his kicks from watching honeybees instead of television.
"I remember when Daddy would get his veil and his smoker and go out and do what they call 'rob the bees,' take off some of that fresh honey and bring it in," he says. "Many small farmers back then had honeybees. They kept them primarily for food, for their honey. I don't think they knew a lot about the pollination back then, but they were helping us produce melons, cucumbers and squash."
Before Wooten was old enough to get his driver's license, he had purchased his first bees. Although he spent much of his adult career managing the natural resource and environmental program at a nearby Marine base, he currently devotes his time to his Jacksonville, N.C. farm, where he grows blueberries and tends to about 100 colonies containing 30,000 to 40,000 bees each.
He also was happy to manage the on-set colonies for this month's Fox Searchlight release "The Secret Life of Bees." By the time preproduction started, he found himself running a full-blown beekeeping school for Queen Latifah, Dakota Fanning, Tristan Wilds and several other members of the cast and crew. "I'm just an old country boy in eastern North Carolina that has had bees much of my life," he says. "I'm delighted that I had an opportunity to participate. I think that this movie is going to be good for the honeybee and the beekeeping industry."
Whatever will bee, will bee: Wooten found that the movie bees were a laid-back bunch. "I didn't know about the bees that were going be used on the set, and I wanted to look at them and see what kind of disposition they had," he says. "The first hive that I opened, I said, 'Well, I don't know what this is, beginner's luck or if this is the way they're going to be every day, but they're perfect today. They're calm. They're gentle.' And they had just been on a trip. But those bees were just nice."
Some like it hot: Although bees tend to be on their best behavior when the weather is warm, sunny and calm, "The Secret Life of Bees" shot in the dead of winter. "I recommended a greenhouse, which we got, and we put the bees in it," says Wooten. "That enabled us to work on some days that we wouldn't have been able to. Bees are cold-blooded animals, and they cluster up to stay warm. They have to keep their temperature at 90 or a little bit better to survive."
