The earth's entire agricultural production depends on bees but they are dying in countless numbers, and nobody knows exactly why. On every continent, beekeepers have seen the collapse of their colonies, a phenomenon that threatens the foundations of agriculture. The Ailing Queen follows Anicet Desrochers, a young, passionate beekeeper in the Laurentian mountains of Quebec as he works through the seasons to strengthen his colonies' natural resistance and spread the word about his methods. Desrochers is a pioneer of a more ecological method of managing bees, the fields they pollinate and, ultimately, the food we live by.