India, May 20 -- 'If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left' - Albert Einstein

One Saturday evening in Aldona (North Goa) Market. The crowd was milling around Savio D'Cunha's wooden table to peek into a glass lid box that had a tiny hole sealed with a screw. Inside, hundreds of bees were buzzing and crawling around hexagonal combs laden with blobs of dark brown honey. These tiny Trigona (Barik Mus) stingless bees must have flown thousands of miles to collect nectar (bees fly 55,000 miles back and forth for 2 million flower visits to make one pound of honey). In the crowd, I could not find the honey bee and the worker bees were gloriously unaware of the curiosity around them. The...