Lord Marmaduke Ffogg is a minor Batman villain who is also a beekeeper. Sounds like a pretty good combination, but unfortunately Ffogg is a bit of a letdown. You see, rather than using beekeeping as the theme of his crimes, Ffogg’s theme is fog. He does, admittedly, make good use of that theme. He lives in a town called “Fogshire” and he’s got a Pipe of Fog that billows forth enough fog to cover his crimes. He’s got exploding pellets than can create a fog that paralyzes people. He’s got a “mind fogging” machine that can mess with people’s minds. Overall, he’s pretty on brand, it’s just not the brand that would get him points in a Beekeeper Review.

And, as Batman villains go, he’s got a sweet set-up. He’s not only got his own henchmen, but his sister and daughter are in on his crimes and use the girls at the “posh girls finishing school” they run as an additional set of henchmen. That’s two henchgroups in this one criminal setup. Pretty good deal.

But Ffogg is a beekeeper as well. Though it seems to be a mere hobby for him. He keeps only a single hive, though it is full of African Death Bees (“One sting and you’re finished”). That’s an impressively badass-sounding type of bee, but the closest he gets to using beekeeping as a part his life of crime is to have his hive set up is a trap for those who might be snooping around his estate. When he showed up in the comics based on the show his bees were not even mentioned (also, there he was called “Professor Ffogg”, so perhaps he lost his Lordship).

I have some theories about Ffogg. He’s from “one of the most aristocratic families in the land” and I feel that this was probably a family with some more respectable beekeepers before Marmaduke came along. Devices like the fog pellets and the fog pipe may have been adapted from technology they used for smoke. That theory will never likely be confirmed either way, but if it were true it means that Ffogg is even more disappointing. Sorry, Marmaduke, but you’re not what we’re looking for.

One Honeycomb out of Five.

Bees are disappearing and something needs to be done about that. “1313: Giant Killer Bees!” is a “movie” that uses that as the setup for its “plot”. In an attempt to give bees the boost they need to survive, some professor has shipped a bunch of handsome students to a tropical compound to try to fix bees with experiments. Paul is the only beekeeper in the project, everyone else being a mere scientist.

Well, the experiments result in giant bees that turn people into zombies and Paul dies almost immediately. They can’t all be winners. But hey, the movie says that he’s basically one of the only competent people involved in the project. He had nothing to do with the injections that caused the mutations. The fact that he removes his protective mask while running away from a giant bee could be a sign of stupidity, but maybe he can just gauge how useless it would be against a giant bee, right? Could be. Wants to free up his peripheral vision? Maybe?

Anyway… The giant bees cause the end of the world.

Two Honeycombs out of Five. He seemed to be a functional beekeeper, but in the face of the supernatural, he could not hold his own.

Charlotte “Chuck” Charles appeared in the show “Pushing Daisies”. Unfortunately, she was killed off in the very first episode. Fortunately, this was a show where that doesn’t stop her, for the protagonist, a piemaker named Ned, has the ability to raise the dead with his touch. There are rules about how this works, but those are his deal and this is about Chuck, so let’s focus on her.

The facts are these: When Chuck was young, her father died. Afterward, she was raised by her aunts, who introduced her to beekeeping. After growing up and being murdered, she was resurrected by Ned. Now ‘Alive-Again’ (a term she prefers over undead), Chuck resumes her beekeeping career on a roof in the city (“Operation: Urban Honey Pioneer”).

Does she have any powers? Well, she probably won’t age, that counts for something. If I really want to push it, I can say that she has used mood-enhancing drugs while baking pies, which is sort of like being knowledgeable with potions and stuff. She keeps her cool even when being swarmed by bees that aren’t her own, which is good and actually beekeeping-related. More significantly, when her bees are killed by “rogue pesticides” she has Ned reanimate them all, creating a hive full of ageless Alive-Again bees. That’s pretty neat. Finally, she has claimed that the honey that she and the bees make now is the best she’s had, though she admits that most things taste better since her death, so we can’t be too sure. There is no legacy of beekeeping in her family, though. It seems that her aunts simply found an ad for some bees in a magazine and thought it might cheer her up. The aunts seem to have helped out when she was a kid, but this is not one of those cases where a beekeeper comes from a lineage of those in the profession.

Well, what kind of person is she? It is implied that she has some sins in her past that she wants to make up for after her rebirth, but I don’t see the signs of Beekeeper Rage. In her post-death life, she joins Ned and his friends as they solve mysteries. I’ve not covered this before, but I definitely put solving mysteries in the same category as being a badass fighter. Solving mysteries is just fighting crime with your brain’s fists, after all. By the end of the series, she is even adopting a “superhero”-style nickname for herself: “The Alive-Again Avenger”. Sounds like she’s in this for keeps. Alright, so how does she stack up?

Three Honeycombs out of Five. She’s an impressive beekeeper with some supernatural elements, I’ll give her that. But, apart from one episode that made mention of the fact that Egyptians connected bees with death, the supernatural elements have little to do with her being a beekeeper. She’s a reanimated crimefighter who happens to keep bees.

Today’s beekeeper appeared in an episode of Mission Impossible titled “Zubrovnik’s Ghost”. First, let’s have a quick summary of the episode: Some enemy agents are trying to convince someone to defect to their side by telling her that her husband’s ghost wants her to. That’s a lie, though. Her husband, the titular Dr. Zubrovnik, wasn’t even dead for real. For the purposes of this ruse, the bad guys killed a beekeeper and burned his body to pass it off as Zubrovnik. That was a mistake. The beekeeper’s ghost takes its violent revenge on his killers, and the agents that Mission Impossible sent (I’m not going to bother learning which organization stars in the show) get to stand around wondering why this show isn’t about beekeeper ghosts every week.

We never get to see this beekeeper alive, or even learn his name. He’s an unfortunate victim of a murder before the episode even begins, which suggests he may not be the best fighter, but from his position in the afterlife, he displays some real power.

The first suggestion that things are not as they seem is that the bees around Zubrovnik’s mansion are active at night, and even during thunderstorms. Of course, they also wind up swarming the murderers, so it is pretty clear they’re doing the dead beekeeper’s bidding. The ghostly apiarist also displays control over smoke, another standard supernatural beekeeper weapon. Furthermore, his ability to shut and lock doors from beyond the grave should be mentioned. Sure, that’s more Ghost Power than Beekeeper Power, but it is his Beekeeper Rage that brings him back from the grave in the first place.

We do have to address that Beekeeper Rage, though. Now, I’m not going to say getting murdered is something one shouldn’t get a little ticked off about, but as is so often the case, Beekeeper Rage goes above and beyond rational anger. Mission Impossible’s psychic agent tries to contact Zubrovnik’s ghost, but instead find’s the beekeeper, whom she describes as having “unquenchable power”. “It hates,” she says. “It hates!” The beekeeper is using his ghostness to strike out at some bad guys, so I can’t say he isn’t using it in a productive way, but it sure seems to have completely overwhelmed his humanity. Hopefully once the murderers are dead he can find some peace.

It is my understanding, from Internet research, that the Mission Impossible franchise has maintained a continuity that goes all the way to the movies that still come out to this day, rather than having been rebooted like so many franchises. I also understand that the truly supernatural events in this episode are not in keeping with the general tone of Mission Impossible. Since this is supernatural beekeeper exists in a world where that sort of thing is not common, it is actually more impressive that he has these powers.

Three Honeycombs out of Five.

Ulysses Jackson, known as Ulee for short, is a pretty standard beekeeper. Like all the best, he comes from a line of beekeepers (dating back at least to his grandfather). He is just a beekeeper who goes about his business and doesn’t have extraordinary adventures. Most of the time. He is the protagonist of the film Ulee’s Gold.

As of the start of the film, things aren’t going great for Ulee. He’s been working to repair his life after some very bad times, but still things aren’t great. He’s getting old and sore, which makes it hard to do his work. At the beginning of the movie, it is noted that he is working fewer bees than he used to, which means less honey which means less money. Though he does hire part-time assistants, he mostly eschews help as a matter of pride. He’s keeping the business alive, but it is getting harder all the time. His family life is even worse. His son turned out to be a bank robber and wound up in jail. His daughter-in-law has become a junkie and left town. And even after they were recovering from all that, Ulee’s wife died, so now Ulee is raising two granddaughters on his own.

Ulee is not an emotionally healthy person. There’s some PTSD in there. Some Survivor’s Guilt. Many regrets about family stuff. And, naturally, he’s got Beekeeper’s Rage in there too. He’s angry with his son, with his daughter-in-law, with the town Sheriff, with many things. Most of his issues come in the form of trying to avoid showing weakness. He makes his life harder because, as he tells his grand-kids, “we don’t ask outsiders for help”. He tries to do everything on his own, refusing to accept that he can’t. He’s also seems pretty unhappy that his family isn’t likely to keep the business alive, saying “It’s pretty hard work. Most young folks can’t be bothered.” On the upside, he’s got a family dog named “Buckshot” and a truck with a crane for moving hives and stuff. He hasn’t painted it to look like a bee or anything, though. He ought to work on that.

But then, in a “serious drama” movie like this, we aren’t likely to get much in the way of Supernatural Beekeeper Magic, are we? Well, no. But he does note: “The bees and I have an understanding. I take care of them, they take care of me.” And when checking the honeycombs, he does use a smoker, but doesn’t wear gloves. These are minor signs that he has preternatural communication with the bees, but I’ll take what I can get. More significantly though, Ulee is a veteran of the Vietnam war. And it is indicated that his entire unit was killed save Ulee himself. Sounds to me like this Beekeeper can fight.

As the actual plot of the movie unfolds (some of his son’s criminal friends come back to try to find some hidden heist money), Ulee winds up learning that asking for help isn’t a character flaw (in his words “There’s all kinds of weakness in the world. Not all of it is evil. I forget that from time to time.”) and basically everything good that could happen to his family does (the junkie daughter-in-law is brought back and gets cleaned up, the granddaughters get interested in the family business, the son makes peace with Ulee and will probably be out of jail in a year). A happy ending earned by fighting through some tough times, even if it isn’t the punching and kicking kind of fighting.

Three Honeycombs out of Five. I admit I had some doubts about going that high, but then I remembered that’s there’s probably a story in his past about him surviving some real crazy stuff in ‘Nam.