The Smallest Creature, the Biggest Role: A Climate Poem About Bees
By Muyanja James

She buzzes beneath the golden sun,
With wings no wider than a thumbnail,
Her body brushed in velvet dust—
A whisper in the wind, a breath of life.
The bee.
The smallest creature, the biggest role.

She doesn’t ask for recognition,
No medals pinned upon her thorax,
No applause from fields she feeds,
No paycheck for pollinating dreams.
She dances on petals with sacred duty,
Carrying futures from bloom to bloom.

In gardens, forests, orchards, farms,
Her touch awakens fruits from sleep.
A flicker of wings—a kiss of pollen—
And the cycle spins into abundance.
She paints apples red, gives mangoes their gold,
She gifts us cucumbers, coffee, and clover.

But look—
She’s disappearing.
The hum that once filled morning meadows
Now fades into sterile silence.
The flowers call and no one answers.
The Earth mourns quietly beneath our noise.

What have we done?

We paved her meadows into metal jungles,
Sprayed her food with poison fog,
Set fires in forests, poured smoke in the skies,
And still expected honey on our tongues.
Climate change—
A storm she cannot outrun.

Drought wilts the flowers before her flight,
Floods drown the nests she calls home.
Winters stretch long, cruel, and strange.
Seasons she once knew have lost their rhythm.
She spins in confusion,
Searching for the map the world erased.

Yet she does not protest.
She doesn’t march.
She doesn’t sue.
She doesn’t demand climate justice.
She simply keeps working—
For a world that forgets her.

But we must remember.
We must remember that without her,
One-third of what we eat would vanish.
No almonds, no berries, no cocoa beans.
No sunflowers turning their heads in song.
No beauty in spring, no harvest in fall.

If she falls, we fall.
If she’s silenced, our plates echo her absence.
Our children will taste a world without sweetness,
A world without color,
A world without the invisible hand
That once held up life itself.

And yet,
Hope stirs in the wild places.
In pockets of resistance, in gardens of care,
We see her return—if we dare to change.

Plant the seeds, wild and free.
Let the weeds grow, let the dandelions sing.
Say no to poison, yes to harmony.
Build bee hotels, hum alongside her.
Turn concrete back into nectar paths.

Let your balcony bloom.
Let your farm be her friend.
Let the planet be a place
Where the smallest is celebrated,
Not sacrificed.

She doesn’t ask for money.
She doesn’t ask for fame.
Just flowers.
Just safety.
Just time.

Time to pollinate the planet.
Time to do the work
That none of us can do.

So rise, children of Earth—
Climate warriors, lovers of life—
And protect the bee as you would a child,
For she is both the seed and the sower,
The whisper and the wind,
The smallest creature,
The biggest role.

Let her hum be your anthem.
Let her struggle be your cause.
And may the world we build
Be a place
Where bees—and life—can thrive once more.

Source : Muyanja James