What began as a flicker of guilt years ago, when the massive beehives at a long-abandoned construction on Anna Salai had to be destroyed to make way for the swish Hyatt Regency; ended on Saturday with the bee festival, 'Pollinator 1' drawing to a close after three days of celebrating the insect through visual art, theatre, dance, film and music.

The festival wrapped up with the promise of soon bringing us Pollinator 2 - the bee shall not be forgotten.

Organised by artist and curator Rajeev Sethi, the festival will be remembered for the variety of quirky art installations that brighten up the Hyatt's walls, hallways and gardens.

“The honeybee is the planet's most important pollinator-bees pollinate around 80 per cent of all flowers, some 24,000 varieties, including all our fruits, nuts, vegetables and fibres.

We humans should learn ‘live and let live’ from these creatures — the bee takes nectar from a flower without harming it, and returns the favour by cross-pollination,” said Sethi, who had also brought to the festival traditional bee-keepers and tribals who collect honey from wild bees.

Dr N. Ganapathy, entomologist from Coimbatore's Tamil Nadu Agricultural University took the audience on a tour into the secret lives of bees.

“Did you know that a bee colony is so fiercely feminist that the males, called drones, are reared only to mate with the queen and are then killed on their ‘honeymoon bed’?

Or that the worker bees, all sterile females, secrete a special kind of nectar called ‘Royal Jelly’, known to have miraculous life-saving properties, to feed their Queen Bee?”

While the TNAU has an apiary run by experts, they also train young children, sometimes as young as 2 and 3, to harvest honey.

“When children are not told that a bee stings, they are trusting and fearless - and bees do not sting these children.

A bee can sense fear,” he says, pointing out that bee-rearing was a great hobby for children. Pollinator1, as the hostess Anita Ratnam delightfully put it, was attended by a large number of NRIs. Many doctors, ecologists, anthropologists and educationists also attended the festival.

performers and experts add to buzz

“Ever since technology began to show tremendous growth in our society and environment, people chose to shift their attention from nature to machines.

Nature has now lost its value and the original beauty; it remains numb and deceased, so do the creatures, like the bee, that now have no place to live,” said Dinesh Yadav, who made this serious theme a brilliantly choreographed work of shadow-puppetry.

Cryptically titled You cannot pluck a flower without harming a star, the poignant puppet show in Telugu, told the story of a land where all the flowers disappear.

With plenty of folk music and puppet dances, and even an appearance from the Bee Goddess, the puppeteers from the group Tholu Bommalata narrated the consequences of letting the bees die out.

A children's theatre group, Aazhi took the stage next. While the audience ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ over the antics of the little ones, dressed in yellow and black bee costumes, the play was a boisterous account of how bees were granted stings to protect themselves from greedy humans.

Directed by Dr Velu Srinivasan, the brood of little actors, especially the three human honey-robber boys, transformed the stage into a colourful fairy tale.

The live music was another highpoint of the play, especially when the actors, street-theatre style, rushed to audience, pulling up surprised spectators up to the stage, for an impromptu performance.

A lively debate on bees as a symbol of survival followed, with prominent Chennaiites like Dr Malini Srinivasan, Chairperson of TVS Educational Society; Kamala Ramakrishnan, former president of World Innerwheel, Dr Rashmi Parthasarathy, the Dean of Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan School, among others , taking the lead.

Pollinator-I serves as an eye-opening experience

Pollinator - I, the bee festival that had kept Chennai buzzing for the last three days had a fitting conclusion on Saturday with everyone who was a part of the mind-blowing event solemnly pledging to do their bit to carry forward the message to save the honey bees from extinction.

Experts from around the country gathered at the ballroom of Hyatt Regency on Saturday to contribute their bit for the noble cause of saving the humble bees.

The day had luminaries from various fields like medicine, environment and science interacting on various related topics like saving the resources, the process of extracting honey and bee keeping.

While there were several informative sessions, the audiences were also entertained with performances by different theatre groups.

While wrapping up the festival, the experts pointed out how bees had so much in common with human beings and the many lessons one could learn from them.

Bees face innumerable threats from us and factors like using pesticides and importing of foreign species have destroyed their natural living environment.

Stressing on this, Mr Rajeev Sethi, the man behind the fest said, “Now that we are here, it is important to understand what comes next.

Apprehensions have already grown and I'm hoping that what we spoke about at Pollinator - I will be shown in actions as well.

” The event would be successful only if what was discussed in the podium reached traditional knowledge keepers, he added.

Prof Kailash C. Malhotra said, “A national level research is being conducted on pollinators, so Pollinator - II will have more inputs.

The pollinator

* A beehive has just one queen bee, around a hundred male bees (drones) and tens of thousands of female worker bees

* The drones cannot feed themselves, they have to be fed by the workers. If the queen decides that the hive has too many drones, the worker bees either starve the males to death, or sting them

* Once a bee stings you, it dies as the sting, along with an important nerve gets detached from its body

* The average lifespan of a worker bee is 35 days

*The worker bees collect nectar and pollen from flowers and mix it to make ‘bee bread’, which is their staple food.

Nectar of the gods

* Honey is formed when the worker bees swallow the nectar, process it with their saliva and stomach
enzymes and then re-gurgitate it, to, store the precious liquid within the hive

* Honey has, for long, been used to treat gastric problems and kill parasitic worms in the stomach

* Honey has low Glycemic Index; many Ayurvedic preparations for diabetes treatment contain honey
Ayurveda says

* Honey should not be heated, or consumed in hot milk or hot water

* Honey should not be consumed in large quantities

* It should not be mixed with meat, poultry or fish

* Honey and ghee should never be consumed in equal quantities together