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City of Wax

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City of Wax is a 1934 American short documentary film produced by Horace and Stacy Woodard about the life of a bee. It won the Oscar at the 7th Academy Awards in 1935 for Best Short Subject (Novelty). Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with the UCLA Film and Television Archive in 2007.

Status: Released

Released Date: 1934-02-09

Runtime: 9 mins

Director: Stacy Woodard, Horace Woodard

Spoken language: English

Genres: Documentary

Original title: City of Wax

Production Companies: Educational Pictures, Skibofilms Productions, Educational Films Corporation of America

Production Countries: United States of America

Cast

Narrator

Gayne Whitman

Reviews

Geronimo1967

And here was me looking for Boris Karloff! Nope, this actually quite a compelling and violent short documentary that looks at the life of bees in their hive as a change of reign beckons. With the older queen running out of eggs, the worker bees make arrangements for a new one, encased in royal jelly, to be born. Once that happens, she leaves the nest to be pursued by the drones. The successful ones dies instantly, the others more brutally as their erstwhile colleagues in the nest tear them wing from wing! The photography here is really quite impressive and gets us up close to this frantic cycle of birth, pollen and honey before it all starts over again inside a rotting tree stump. The narration is informative and we really do get a sense of their frenetic existence. Worth ten minutes.

2025-06-27

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