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Angelina Jolie poses covered with real bees to raise awareness for bee conservation efforts
Angelina Jolie is hauntingly captivating in a National Geographic portrait where is covered with bees.
Posing for a World Bee Day feature, the veteran actress and humanitarian looks calm and peaceful as a swarm of bees covers her torso and face, as seen in an Instagram post on Thursday.
Angelina's beekeeper portrait, photographed by Dan Winters, was her own call to action as she works with UNESCO and Guerlain on a Women for Bees initiative that aims to build 2,500 bee hives and restock 125 million bees by 2025, all while training and supporting 50 women beekeepers.
The photoshoot itself wasn't easy to pull off. According to Dan, it was Angelina who suggested to cover herself with bees to promote the conservation efforts to protect the essential pollinators of the world..
"I'm a beekeeper, and when I was given the assignment to work with Angelina, my main concern was safety," Dan said.
After hiring a master beekeeper named Konrad Bouffard, they contacted an entomologist who formulated a special pheromone for the iconic beekeeper portrait taken by Richard Avedon 40 years ago.
"The entomologist offered to let us use the actual pheromone from the Avedon shoot. We used Italian bees, kept calm throughout our shoot by Konrad. Everyone on set, except Angelina, had to be in a protective suit," Dan said.
He added, "It had to be quiet and fairly dark to keep the bees calm. I applied the pheromone in the places on her body where I wanted bees to congregate. The bees are attracted to the pheromone, but it also encourages them not to swarm. We also placed a large number of bees on a board that rested in front of her waist. Angelina stood perfectly still, covered in bees for 18 minutes without a sting."
In the feature, Angelina also shared how bees are "an indispensable pillar of our food supply" that are under threat by habitat loss, pesticides, parasites, and climate change, but she hoped a global network of women who will be trained can protect these pollinators.
"Protecting life-sustaining pollinators is a challenge well within our grasp," Angelina said. "With so much we are worried about around the world and so many people feeling overwhelmed with bad news this is one [problem] that we can manage.” —Kaela Malig/JCB, GMA News
