That stinging feeling: Rising mercury, nectar shortages trigger bee attacks

The pattern has become so alarming that the U.P. government has proposed adding bee attacks to its list of recognised disasters

- Haidar Naqvi

KANPUR: Ravishankar Agarwal, a 70-year-old iron trader known for his punctuality and soft-spoken manner, stepped out of his car on an April morning in Kanpur for a morning walk.

As he fell a few steps behind his companions near the tree-lined flank of the Cantonment area, a furious swarm of bees descended without warning.

Agarwal, dressed in light cotton, fell to the road as stings multiplied. By the time he was rushed to the nearby military hospital, the man, who had weathered decades of business cycles and social change in Uttar Pradesh's industrial heartland, was declared dead.

Agarwal's death, though sudden, was part of a quiet, unsettling pattern that has emerged across India in recent months.

In just the last three months, bee attacks have surged and three deaths have been reported in Uttar Pradesh. Two of the deaths, including Agarwal's, are from Kanpur.

The month of May alone brought at least six separate attacks across the state.

Among the injured were two Indian Administrative Service officers, and a number of state police services officers in Lalitpur, Bundelkhand.

A number of trainee forest guards in Mirzapur in eastern Uttar Pradesh landed in hospital because of the swarm in May. The bees, it seems, are not distinguishing between farmer or official, morning walker or forester.

The pattern has become so alarming that the Uttar Pradesh government has now proposed adding bee attacks to its list of recognised disasters. In a recent meeting chaired by the state's chief secretary, it was proposed that victims of such attacks would be eligible for compensation under disaster relief provisions—up to Rs 4 lakh in the case of death.

According to the proposal, bee attacks will now be treated alongside incidents involving wild animal encounters and house collapses.

Scientists, who study bee behaviour, see the recent aggression not as randomness, but as an ecological warning.