I was reading about Edmond Albius, the former slave who learned how to pollinate the vanilla plant (at age 12!), which is why we have commercial vanilla today.
Albius’s manual pollination method is still used today, as nearly all vanilla is pollinated by hand.
Thinks makes me wonder if they could make a “closed system” outside the natural range - like a giant greenhouse that includes the plant AND the bee.
Which would then turn into a movie-worthy story about the bees getting out and somehow causing the zombie apocalypse.
OR - it would just be BioDome with Pauly Shore. But with bees.