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bees are dying

We are the World BlogfestTo spread peace and humanity on social media, a few of us have worked together to create the We are the World Blogfest. In a world where news and social media are awash with negativity, we aim to turn the focus on to small but significant stories that renew our faith in humanity.

We are the World Blogfest is here with its fourteenth edition.

I’m helping co-host this month along with these wonderful bloggers: Shilpa Garg, Peter Nena, Andrea Michaels, Inderpreet Kaur Uppal . Go visit them please and thank them for their hard work behind the scenes.
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I usually post individual stories of love and hope from around Asia, but this time for a spark of light in the darkness, I’d like to share an absolutely heartening piece of news for humanity in general, but for my friends the bees in particular.

bees are dyingIn recent times, worldwide bee populations have been falling at an alarming rate, and this has dire consequences for the survival of our species: bees pollinate 90 per cent of our crops. One of the main reasons bees are dying out is the use of toxic pesticides.

So I’m thrilled to learn that the European Union has voted to permanently ban bee-harming pesticides.

The ban has also received extensive public support, with a petition from campaign group Avaaz gathering nearly 5 million signatures calling on European ministers to support it.

“Banning these toxic pesticides is a beacon of hope for bees. Finally, our governments are listening to their citizens, the scientific evidence and farmers who know that bees can’t live with these chemicals and we can’t live without bees.,” said Antonia Staats, senior campaigner at Avaaz.

I was one of the millions who signed the petition, and this was a result I hadn’t expected. I hope that such bans come into effect worldwide, and that humanity wakes up to save bees before it is too late.


Do you see bees in the gardens, parks, or farms around you? Do you know if they’re safe or endangered in your area? Do you have beekeeper friends? Would you vote for a ban on bee-killing pesticides?

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If you’d like to take part in this blogfest, sign up in the WE ARE THE WORLD Blogfest Linky List below and please help spread the word on social media via the hashtag #WATWB.

~~~GUIDELINES~~~

  1. Keep your post to below 500 words.
  2. All we ask is you link to a human news story on your blog on the last Friday of each month, one that shows love and humanity.
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  4. Place the WE ARE THE WORLD BLOGFEST Badge on your sidebar, and help us spread the word on social media. Tweets, Facebook shares, G+ shares using the #WATWB hashtag through the month most welcome. More We Are the World Blogfest signups mean more friends, love and light for all of us.
  5. We’ll read and comment on each others’ posts, get to know each other better, and hopefully, make or renew some friendships with everyone who signs on as participants in the coming months.
  6. Add your post HERE so we can all find it quickly.

 The We are The World Blogfest Community Page on Facebook will continue to show links to the various blog posts. So you don’t have to hurry through. You can always enjoy one a day. Like the page and share your posts on the thread for the purpose.

We Are the World Blogfest

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Damyanti Biswas

Damyanti Biswas is the author of You Beneath Your Skin and numerous short stories that have been published in magazines and anthologies in the US, the UK, and Asia. She has been shortlisted for Best Small Fictions and Bath Novel Awards and is co-editor of the Forge Literary Magazine. Her literary crime thriller series, the Blue Mumbai, is represented by Lucienne Diver from The Knight Agency. Both The Blue Bar and The Blue Monsoon were published in 2023.

I appreciate comments, and I always visit back. If you're having trouble commenting, let me know via the contact form, or tweet me up @damyantig !

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27 Comments

  • Inderpreet says:

    I love the bees even though I am so afraid of them. The beautiful flowers make it worth to save them. Glad to know some good is being done.

  • Thanks for the like I am glad to know someone agrees with me.

  • aj vosse says:

    Yes, I care about bees and am proud to say my signature was on that list!
    Keep spreading the good news! 😉

  • I do care about bees! I’m going to visit my sister and her daughter’s beehives this summer. I expect to be wowed.

    I don’t know enough about the ban or the petition but the intent is admirable.

  • simonfalk28 says:

    Great news and great initiative. Bees are so important for ecological balance and honey is such a good natural sugar for food production. Surely this has to be a winner.

  • Mayur says:

    No

  • ccyager says:

    Here in Minnesota, supported by the University of Minnesota, there’s an educational initiative to get more people to plant more bee friendly gardens. It is only a small step toward bringing back the honey bees in this area of the world. I’m not a huge fan of bees or wasps, but I do want to have the food that bees make possible. Thank you for this story!

  • Erika Beebe says:

    Yes! We need Bees very much! I am so sad to hear they are seen as something bad. Have a great rest of your weekend 🙂

  • ericlahti says:

    I guess for a long time, no one was entirely certain why bee populations were dropping off. When someone finally figured it out, I was really hopeful that people would come to their senses and just stop using that particular pesticide. Of course, even with the fate of the entire food chain at stake, they didn’t. It’s good to know that at least some people in government – even the fools that currently run ours – had enough presence of mind to stop risking the planet.

  • Tizzy Brown says:

    I adore bees and I’m so happy about the new law that will help protect them. We see quite a lot of bees where I live (a rural part of England) and we deliberately chose a lot of bee-friendly plants for our garden. I love to see them buzzing around the lavender. Bumble bees are my favourite, they look so cute and fluffy.

  • Susan Scott says:

    Bees be our friends and help in invaluable ways in the pollination chain … well done on the EU and any organisation that says NO to pesticides. Great news indeed… thanks Damyanti 🙂

  • Susan Scott says:

    Smart move for the EU to ban pesticides. No bees means no food – the last several years have seen a decline in bee populations due to pesticides. Thanks Damyanti- positive news indeed! And thanks for co-hosting this month. ?

  • Indira says:

    Wonderful post. Usually we take from the nature and forget to repay. The day each person will start thinking seriously that it’s his/her duty to do something for the nature, world will change.

  • dgkaye says:

    Wonderful acknowledgement Damyanti. The day every country follows suit and bans pesticides, nature will be at peace. 🙂

  • I still see bees, lots. We keep flowers separate etc. But I read a very good WaPo report on it today, had heard about this about a month ago. The area of bee collapse was only in Hawaii — which I didn’t know — and still no one really has an idea, but I bet a combo of pesticides, high sugar cane pollination only (not rotating crops around), and collecting the honey for human consumption, not allowing bees their natural food (which apparently, each beehive can only survive on their own honey from that hive…). Fatigued and fallen bees may only need to be revived with sugar water before being proclaimed dead. But here is the WaPo article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/10/10/believe-it-or-not-the-bees-are-doing-just-fine/?utm_term=.3862e0e55073

  • Peter Nena says:

    I don’t see butterflies either. Or bats or moths or dragon flies or grasshoppers or certain birds. I used to see a lot of bats at night, chasing flies and passing so close to the house. And birds were plenty and diverse. They are vanishing.
    I also signed that petition to save the bees. I’m happy it achieved its goal. Thank you Damyanti.

  • Widdershins says:

    The bees were late coming out of hibernation this year because of our late spring, but I’m happy to say that as more blooms appear in the garden and surrounding houses, more bees are turning up too. 😀

  • hilarymb says:

    Hi Damyanti – it’s great the EU are pulling the toxic pesticides … I hope the bees can recover. I just heard about how 2 sorts of bees in South Africa are altering their behaviour … they’re evolving very fast to go against the other sort … we’re not helping, but other things are happening over which the law of unintended consquences wasn’t known. Always good to read about bees … cheers Hilary

  • This is thrilling news indeed and I’m very happy to celebrate it. And now the rest of the world needs to follow suit. We must all act to save the bees.

    Thanks for sharing this story, and for co-hosting this month.

  • bikerchick57 says:

    This is good news for Europe! I hope the ban will spread to the rest of the world. It’s time we found alternatives to toxic pesticides that harm the planet and the human population. Thanks for sharing this, Damyanti!

  • Birgit says:

    I am all for getting rid of pesticides because it kills us as well and the big wigs don’t think of that. I am so happy that Europe is taking this endeavor and I wish North America would follow suit. In our little garden area, we have planted butterfly bushes, lavender and salvia which bees and butterflies love plus we just planted milkweed to help the butterfly population.

  • JT Twissel says:

    We have a lot of rosemary growing around the house – bees just love it.

  • Pradeep says:

    I do understand that pesticides server a purpose.
    But their use should not result in large-scale collateral damage.
    This is a great victory for the petitioners and lovers of bees.

  • That’s great news indeed. I hope something like this can be replicated here in India as well so we can revive our dying bee population and resultant reduced pollination as well. Thanks for sharing this heartening news with us.

  • About time someone did something about it. Just too many toxic chemicals out there. There has to be a way to control bugs without killing bees. And now they will have to discover that way!