The Tongue of the Sun documents the relationship between the beekeeper, the bees and the plant life of Birmingham city centre over the 2022-3 beekeeping season. Its aim is to map the plants on which the bees feed and the biodiversity of the plant life in the city, using 16mm film and plant-based experimental processes. Beekeeper Tim Vivian maintains hives on the rooftops of buildings across the city centre. The area offers a surprising variety of plants for the bees to feed on. The film itself becomes quite bee-like, capturing single-frame animations with a 16mm Bolex camera mapping the plant life of the streets, canals and car parks. Through the project, we also track the floral diet of the bees, collecting and sampling the pollen they bring back to the hive on their legs, which changes throughout the flowering season. The pollen was scanned using electron microscopy, as each plant's pollen grains are unique and come in a variety of unique colors and shapes. The film attempts to trace, through the pollen-collecting activity of the bees, a pollen color chart unique to this locality and to these specific bee hives.