India, April 19 -- The doorbell rings naggingly in spring and summer at our Chandigarh home. Outside are beehive removers, unemployed youths who prowl the gardens and groves spotting hives. They offer to have the hive removed (by smoking or burning them down) and sell residents honey. These youths have no licence to remove the critical agents of pollination but find mutual convergence in residents, who, suffering from bee paranoia, gladly pay to have hives taken down. They relish honey, which was actually produced by bees for their babies (larvae). There is scarcely any citizen voice in our midst that protests bee eviction or expresses poetic lament. Law-enforcement and environment/biodiversity departments are too preoccupied with "weightier matters of the state" to bother about bees. It can only end in a silent spring, the abundant flora and groves devoid of the buzz of busy bees. But there are hearts out there which beat for tiny, industrious bees - assessed to pollinate 85% of planetary vegetation. Perhaps, it takes a sensitive and creative artist to pay poignant tribute, serve warning and kindle a lost empathy. Luci Jockel is an American artist from Baltimore, who has gained appreciation for unique works. She painstakingly fashions lace work and veils from wings ethically collected from dead bees, thereby transforming loss into art. Her work, 'Gold Veil', has been acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Jockel used archival glue to fuse together 21,600 bee wings to create a long mourning veil. Her work has been described as giving a voice to deceased beings in the hopes of building an interconnectivity between human and animal. In Jockel's own words: "It began with the idea to memorialise and mourn honey bees due to their decline, making a veil from their wings. My works are memorials for the animals. Can the touch of bee wings on one's shoulders serve as a reminder of the fragility of life? In my work, the bee is a martyr for our ecosystem - a symbol of the influence we have upon non-human counterparts and how we rely on these beings to keep our environment livable."...