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substances disorient bees, impair memory and navigation, and often prove fatal. Entire hives have collapsed overnight. For small-scale beekeepers, the damage is devastating.

Equally worrying is habitat loss. As forests give way to brick kilns, roads, and industrial sprawl, wild bees lose access to flowering plants and safe nesting sites. Traditional rural apiculture has sharply declined. Climate change adds another layer of stress, disrupting seasonal rhythms and floral cycles. During a heatwave in April last year, honeybee colonies in Satkhira reportedly abandoned their hives in search of cooler zones.

These patterns risk unravelling more than just bee populations -- they threaten our agricultural cycles and ecological balance. But some local initiatives are showing promise.

In the Chittagong Hill Tracts, and districts like Jamalpur and Jashore, community-led beekeeping projects are empowering women and indigenous farmers. With support from NGOs and the Department of Agricultural Extension, these groups are setting up apiaries, improving yields, and earning supplementary income.

An especially creative solution has emerged in response to human-elephant conflict. In areas like Horikhola, Teknaf -- where refugee settlements and elephant corridors intersect -- communities have adopted beehive fencing, a technique inspired by Kenya. Backed by IUCN Bangladesh and UNHCR, the method was introduced in 2021 after a feasibility study.

Here, 20 farmers, including women-led households, were trained in beekeeping. Their hives now form a “beehive fence” protecting homes within a one-kilometre radius. Elephants, which instinctively avoid bees, are deterred without harm. By March 2025, over 30kg of honey had been harvested, and elephant incursions had notably dropped.

This rare initiative offers a win-win: mitigating human-wildlife conflict while safeguarding pollinators and livelihoods.

Each year, World Bee Day is marked with posters, school campaigns, and awareness drives. Companies like Syngenta Bangladesh have led youth programmes spotlighting bee protection. These efforts matter -- but they are not enough.

We need structural change. Stricter regulations on harmful pesticides. Legal safeguards for habitats. Research on native bee species. Real investment in sustainable farming. As a party to the Convention on Biological Diversity, Bangladesh is obligated to act.

Bees don’t need rescuing. They just need us to stop harming them. And in doing so, we protect our own future.

This World Bee Day, let us place pollinators at the heart of our environmental discourse. Let us stop poisoning our fields. Let us plant flowers, not factories. Let the buzz return -- steady and strong.

Because when bees thrive, we all thrive.