The film's producer, Elías Querejeta, worried that the film would not reach completion.[11]
In a prior version of the story, originally set in the period of the 1970s, a grown Ana's father is terminally ill, and she returns to her village to reunite with him. Thinking that this version would “tidy up the drama, emphasizing soap opera over childish magic,” Erice changed the story.[2]
The location used was the village of Hoyuelos, Segovia, Castilla y León, Spain.[12]
The four main characters each have a first name identical to that of the actor playing them. This is because Ana, at her young age of seven at the time of filming, was confused by the on- and off-screen naming. Erice simply changed the script to adopt the actors' names for the characters.[13]
Víctor Erice wrote of his choice of title: "The title really is not mine. It is taken from a book, in my opinion the most beautiful thing ever written about the life of bees, written by the great poet and playwright Maurice Maeterlinck. In that work, Maeterlinck uses the expression 'The Spirit of the Beehive' to name the powerful, enigmatic and paradoxical force that the bees seem to obey, and that the reason of man has never come to understand."[8]
The film's cinematographer, Luis Cuadrado, was going blind during filming.[14]
