The Bee Man of Pune: How One Man is Rescuing India’s Buzzing Lifeline
In the quiet hum of a summer field, where the scent of blossoms fills the air, something vital is missing — the buzz of bees. These tireless pollinators, responsible for nearly 70% of the world’s pollination, have been vanishing from the very fields that depend on them. In India, this isn’t just about honey. It’s about onions, mangoes, melons — the food on your plate. And in the middle of this silent crisis stands one man with an unlikely mission: saving the bees, one hive at a time.
Meet Amit Godse — software engineer by degree, bee saviour by calling. Known in local circles as the “Bee Man of Pune”, Amit left the glowing screens of a Mumbai tech job to dive into a buzzing world that most people avoid. No safety net, no backup plan — just a deep, unshakable sense of urgency.
A Crisis in the Fields
The numbers are more than sobering — they’re stinging. India produces over 15,000 tonnes of onion seeds each year, and 70% of that relies on honey bee pollination. Without bees, onion seed production — and the onions that follow — would plummet. But this year, onion fields across the country reported a disturbing drop in bee activity. The reason? A toxic cocktail of monoculture farming, rampant pesticide use, and relentless urban sprawl. These practices are killing off bee populations at alarming rates, forcing the few remaining bees to flee rural farms and seek refuge in urban concrete jungles.
But even cities aren’t safe. Frightened residents often call pest control at the first sight of a hive. And just like that — thousands of bees, gone.
From Code to Colonies
Amit didn’t grow up dreaming of bees. In fact, like most of us, he didn’t think much about them at all. But after stumbling across a dying hive on a street corner in Pune, something changed. “I just couldn’t look away,” he recalls. “I saw life — thousands of tiny lives — being destroyed out of fear and ignorance.”
That moment set him on an unexpected path. He started reading, watching videos, contacting bee experts across the world. Armed with nothing but YouTube knowledge and boundless determination, Amit began rescuing hives — one at a time. Some were wedged into air vents, others curled inside electrical boxes, or hidden behind shop signs.
To date, he’s rescued over 17,000 beehives. And no, that’s not a typo.
Turning Pests into Pets
Amit’s initiative, Pest to Pet, is as poetic as it is practical. Rather than exterminating bees, his team rescues and relocates them — often back to farms where their pollination services are desperately needed. He uses different techniques tailored to each of India’s five native bee species, handling them with a level of care usually reserved for endangered animals or rare art.
“Bees aren’t pests,” he says. “They’re the backbone of our ecosystem. If we treat them like pests, we’re signing our own food chain’s death warrant.”
Rebuilding Buzz-friendly Habitats
Rescuing hives is only half the mission. Amit knows that for bees to thrive, they need safe spaces to call home. So he’s planting 5,000 native trees across Pune to bring back floral diversity, and building bamboo bee homes — small, hollow structures that mimic natural nesting spaces.
These homes aren’t just charming garden additions; they’re lifelines. Especially for solitary bee species that don’t live in hives but still perform powerful pollination roles.
In a time when nearly 30% of the global bee population is at risk, these small interventions add up to something big. They give bees a fighting chance. And by extension, they give us one too.
A Call to Reconnect
Perhaps the most remarkable part of Amit’s story isn’t just what he’s doing — it’s how contagious his passion has become. Workshops, school sessions, urban hive adoptions — his mission is growing wings. More and more people are learning to live with bees instead of fearing them.
And for Amit, this isn’t a one-man mission. “We don’t need everyone to become beekeepers,” he says. “But we do need people to stop being bee killers.”
Plant a flowering tree. Say no to chemical pesticides. Let that rooftop hive live. His message is simple: protect the pollinators, and you protect the planet.
More Than Just Honey
So the next time you slice an onion, sip on watermelon juice, or drizzle honey on toast, pause for a moment. Somewhere, a bee made that possible.
And somewhere in Pune, a man swapped a keyboard for a smoker, a desk job for a hive, and in doing so, reminded us of something both fragile and profound: sometimes, the smallest creatures carry the weight of the world — and all it takes is one person to stand up for them.