NARRATOR: On North America's East Coast,
a hidden world of insects
helps farmers grow their crops.
Hardworking honeybees
carry pollen between flowers.
And monarch butterflies
undergo a life-altering metamorphosis.
On the jagged coast of Canada's Eastern shore,
a delicate and diverse ecosystem
thrives on the fringes of the continent.
Welcome to the Wild Wild East.
NARRATOR: Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley
is the agricultural capital
of the Wild Wild East.
This low-lying area
has a microclimate all of its own.
Two large hills to the north and to the south
shelter it from the harsh climate
of the Atlantic Ocean.
Here, spring starts earlier
and the summer is warmer.
Good weather and the land's sediment rich soil
create an environment perfect for farming.
For 500 years
industrious farmers have toiled these lands,
their crops feeding generations
here, and around the world.
But they haven't done it alone.
Wildlife works hand-in-hand with humans
to shape the farmland of the Annapolis Valley.
Barn swallows are true country dwellers,
occupying barns and stables,
they nest exclusively in man-made shelters
across the world.
Up in the rafters they mold together
their cup-shaped nest with mud and grass.
Farmers welcome these birds.
Barn swallows help cultivate their fields.
They keep insects that damage crops at bay,
like grasshoppers.
Hummingbirds do their part too,
traveling from flower to flower,
eating nectar and spreading pollen.
Along the way, they suck down sugar water
from bird feeders left out by friendly farmers.
Both sugar water and nectar
help hummingbirds fuel their rapid wing movement.
They actually prefer the sugar water
because it's higher in calories.
But once they're in the area,
they do their part to pollinate flowers too.
This apple orchard would never bear fruit
without the birds and the bees.
These are honeybees.
Unlike their bumblebee cousins,
honeybees don't build the structures
that house their hives.
Instead, they seek out pre-existing shelters,
like dead, hollow trees, or in this case,
boxes placed here by the farmers
of the Annapolis Valley.
They build perfectly symmetrical
wax honeycombs inside.
It's only springtime,
but the colony's already hard at work
preparing for winter.
Bees need to make enough honey
to make it through the winter.
And to do so, they gather nectar from nearby flowers.
A scout arrives back at the nest.
She squirms with excitement
to tell her co-workers what she's found.
Honeybees have remarkable communication methods.
This is the waggle dance.
It's how a honeybee gives directions.
The intricate abdominal movements
convey where the food source is
relative to the sun.
Up means go toward the sun,
down means travel the other direction.
This bee is saying, fly toward the sun
and then take a left.
The duration of the dance
tells the other bees how far to go.
Pointed in the right direction,
the honeybees follow their instructions
to find a nearby apple orchard.
The bees are collecting two things,
nectar and pollen.
And these apple blossoms are chock-full
of the main ingredient in honey: nectar.
This sugary fluid attracts bees
and other pollinators.
It is part of an important give and take
between the plant and the bee.
Bees suck up nectar through their proboscis,
then store it in a special "honey-stomach"
to transport back to the hive.
As they feed, pollen from the flower will stick to them.
In flight, bees comb off the pollen
and stuff it in the yellow pouch on their legs,
called a pollen basket.
Any unpacked pollen brushes off the bee
as they visit other blossoms.
This pollinates, or fertilizes the flower,
which will then produce an apple.
Apple blossoms bloom for just over a week,
so the industrious bees have to act quickly.
A bee will visit hundreds of flowers
before her honey stomach is full
and she returns to the hive.
One hive can pollinate an apple orchard
the size of a football field,
in a single day.
By summer time,
the apple blossoms are gone from the Annapolis Valley,
and bees have moved on to other flowers.
When the summer arrives it brings a seasonal visitor
to the Wild Wild East,
the monarch butterfly.
The journey begins when milkweed,
the monarch's main fuel plant,
begins to emerge.
Monarchs feed on the milkweed's nectar
and use its leaves to feed their young.
This monarch's ancestry
stretches all the way to Mexico,
three generations have passed
in less than a year.
Their genealogy is a consequence
of the monarch butterfly's amazing migration.
In March,
the monarch butterflies in Mexico
begin their journey north.
A single butterfly lives for about six weeks
before stopping to lay eggs,
and then dying shortly after.
After a three week period
a new adult monarch butterfly will emerge
and continue north in search of milkweed.
The journey is like a relay race,
and it's brought this monarch butterfly
all the way to the Annapolis Valley.
In the fall, the final generation to be born
from this year's migration
will make the long journey south.
Back at the hive, a forager
returns with a full pollen basket.
The other bees will help her unpack.
They stuff the pollen down into cells of the hive,
and mix it with nectar and saliva
to create "bee bread."
This is the bee's super food,
loaded with carbohydrates, protein,
and all the other nutrients needed to keep energy up
as they work from sun up to sun down.
When bees arrive back at the hive
they pump the nectar they've collected,
out of their honey stomach,
directly into another bee's mouth
to mix it with enzymes.
Once it's been twice consumed,
they pour the nectar into cells.
As the water density in the nectar drops,
it thickens, and turns into honey.
When it's ready, bees seal the cells
to keep their honey fresh
until the hive needs it.
There are between 30 and 60 thousand bees in a colony,
and the female worker bees
make up 99% of the hive.
Worker bees have different roles in the hive
depending on their age.
The youngest bees clean the hive
and care for the larvae, feeding them honey.
The next job up the age ladder
is a construction worker,
building the hive's infrastructure.
Honeycombs are made from a wax
that seeps out of glands located on the bee's abdomen.
As the bee gets older
it undertakes a variety of other duties,
like bringing water from outside,
where it evaporates and cools down the hive.
Or fanning the surroundings with their wings
to improve ventilation inside.
Worker bees also serve as the hive's bouncers,
controlling who's allowed to enter.
Honeybees recognize their own colony by scent.
This bee is from another hive,
so the two security guards are trying to chase it away.
The oldest worker bees are foragers.
They are responsible for traveling outside the hive
to gather nectar and pollen.
Bees live for only a month, and in this time,
a bee goes through each of these jobs one-by-one,
until they die of old age.
It looks like a painful death,
but the dead bees will continue to serve a purpose.
The approaching ant serves its own colony of insects.
It will relay the dying bee's whereabouts
to its members, who will return
to carry it off for dinner.
Even in death, the bee plays an important part
in the food web of the Annapolis Valley.
Back inside the hive,
the circle of life keeps on spinning.
The colony's queen has just laid these eggs.
She's the mother of everyone in the colony.
The one and only queen bee.
Her scent draws flocks of workers toward her.
The other bees are hardwired to serve her.
She has the most important job in the hive,
replenishing the workforce.
A queen bee can live until she's 5 years old,
and lay up to a million eggs in her lifetime.
But she only mates for a short period of time
a few days after she's born,
coupling with 12 to 15 different males.
The queen then preserves up to 6 million sperm inside her
for the rest of her life.
She uses these sperm periodically to fertilize eggs
before laying them in a cell.
These bees with the big eyes
are the males, called drones.
Their only job is to mate with the queen.
New queens are only born when the old queen dies.
So drones most often mate with virgin queens
from other colonies.
If they are unsuccessful, drone's will die virgins
and be chased out of the hive
so no precious honey is wasted feeding them.
And there's one more worker looking after this hive:
the beekeeper.
These workers are part of an ancient tradition.
Beekeeping instructions can be found
scrawled across the walls of the Egyptian pyramids.
This is called a frame hive.
Inside bees construct their honeycombs
between removable panels.
Beekeepers have a symbiotic relationship
with the hive.
The beekeeper's transport the bees
to fields blooming with flowers,
where the bees can collect nectar to make honey.
In return, beekeepers take a portion of the bee's honey,
and also sell their services to local farmers
looking to pollinate crops, such as apple orchards.
Beekeepers use a smoker to suppress the alarm pheromone
produced by workers guarding the hive.
This allows the beekeeper to retrieve honey
and check in on the larvae bees,
the next generation of his workforce.
Back in the wild fields of the Annapolis Valley,
a monarch butterfly's egg has hatched
and matured into a hungry caterpillar.
Right now it's preparing to turn into a butterfly
by eating as much as it possibly can,
increasing its mass
to fuel an amazing transformation.
It's been alive for more than two weeks
and has shed four layers of skin while growing.
Today it's 3,000 times larger
than when it hatched.
The only thing monarch caterpillars eat is milkweed.
There are over 100 species of milkweed
spread across North America.
Insects love it,
but milkweed is toxic to most birds and mammals.
You are what you eat, so monarch caterpillars
also become poisonous to a lot of predators.
As they consume more of the toxic plant,
the caterpillars develop bright, contrasting colors.
These stripes are a warning to predators.
Eating this caterpillar could kill them.
When the caterpillar matures into a butterfly,
it will still carry this poisonous trait.
So the milkweed is both a food source and protector.
After up to three weeks of gorging itself,
this caterpillar has finally had its fill.
It now seeks out a horizontal branch
to support its transformation.
From its lower lip,
the caterpillar spits out a silk,
similar to a spider's, and creates a mat
on the branch.
Then its two back prolegs merge together
to create a twig-like appendage.
The conjoined prolegs have minuscule hooks
that latch onto the silk mat like velcro.
Finally its ready to hang
and the metamorphosis begins.
Once its skin begins to peel,
it's only a couple of minutes
before it sheds its fifth and final layer
of caterpillar skin.
The pale exoskeleton is not a cocoon.
Moths spin cocoons out of silk.
Butterflies emerge from a hard exoskeleton
called a chrysalis.
As the chrysalis gyrates,
it fights to shed the last remnants of its youth.
In the warm summer, it will take 7 to 10 days
for the adult monarch
to emerge and fly through these fields.
Its chrysalis is now transparent,
and the butterfly inside is ready to emerge.
During its transformation,
the cells that make up the caterpillar's body
broke down into a soup.
Then the individual cells morphed into this new form.
Once emerged,
the butterfly hangs like this for several hours,
until the outside of its wings
fill with blood, dry, and stiffen up,
all in preparation for flight.
This winter monarch butterfly, emerging in October,
will live up to seven months,
six times longer than the summer monarch.
It will live in a state of suspended adolescence
to conserve energy for its journey south.
The butterfly will traverse the entire continent.
It won't reach sexual maturity until,
having spent the winter in Mexico,
it arrives back
in the southern United States
the following April.
Weathering storms and dodging windshields,
the monarch will face a number of risks
on its journey south.
Inevitably, they won't all make it.
Fortunately, the population is self-sustaining.
Each northward migration
greatly increases the monarch's numbers again,
as female butterflies will lay numerous eggs.
When the cool air begins to blow through the Valley,
it means the end of the season's milkweed bloom.
And so, it's time for the newly emerged monarchs to leave.
Back at the hive, another new life is beginning.
21 days ago, this bee was just an egg.
11 days later she was a larva sealed in a cell,
who underwent her own transformation.
Now she's fighting her way free,
struggling to join her sisters.
And finally she emerges and goes straight to work.
The cycle continues on inside
and outside the hive.
Now that it's fall, the apples are in full bloom.
Fittingly, these are called Honeycrisps.
They are just one of the 35 different types of apples
grown here in the Annapolis Valley.
All pollinated by a healthy population of honeybees.
From a bird's eye view, the Annapolis Valley
is patchwork of farmer's fields.
A closer look reveals a hidden universe,
where wildlife and humans work together,
undergoing incredible journeys
and amazing transformations.
Soon, winter will fall across the Valley,
and the colors will fade.
The bees will brave the winter here,
huddled in their hives, surviving on their honey.
The monarch butterflies will be long gone,
roosting down south in Mexico.
Come spring, plants and animals will wake,
and the cycle will begin again.
Life continues anew,
in the Wild Wild East.
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