Mail Order Queen
Honey bees—the cornerstone of our food and farming—are in crisis, but not for the reasons you think. Mail Order Queens is a 25-minute documentary that uncovers our broken relationship with the honey bee, through the lens of the modern global beekeeping industry and a cast of shadowy, colloquial and heartfelt beekeepers.
Blending intimate macro and rare archival material, Mail Order Queens invites you into the extraordinary world of beekeepers and their bees—while offering a reflection on questions of control, efficiency, nature and resilience.
Credits and Cast
Producers: Luke Purdye
Director: Luke Purdye
Editing: Tanya Singh
Production Manager: Olivia Song
Music: Charli Mackie
Sound: Lucas Lehmann
Composer: Niklas Sandahl
Director’s Biography- Luke Purdye
I grew up in rural Herefordshire and was always drawn to storytelling about people and place, and their ecology and economy.
After studying Psychology and Zoology, I started an ill-fated social enterprise making preserves from wasted fruit, then spent several years working across sustainability, food waste and human rights—from grassroots NGOs to managing the modern slavery programme at one of the Big Four.
But storytelling was always there in the background. In 2022, I embarked on a new career chapter: a BBC Scholarship at a leading film school, the National Film and Television School (NFTS), to study their Directing and Producing Science and Natural History MA. Here, I began to learn the murky art of storytelling and shot and produced two short films: ‘Urs’ which explored escalating human-bear conflict in Transylvania and my most recent directorial effort, ‘Mail Order Queens’, the story of our broken relationship with the honey bee and the surprising and shadowy global bee industry responsible.