Climate Change, Pollinator Displacement and Human–Bee Conflict: A One Health Framework for Emerging Ecological and Public Health Risks

Reports of mass honey-bee stinging incidents in and around Unnao district, Uttar Pradesh — including a fatal attack during a local cricket match in February 2026 — have renewed attention to a poorly studied interface: the conditions under which honey-bee colonies and human populations come into damaging contact. This paper develops a One Health framework for interpreting such events across three interacting domains — environmental/ecosystem health, pollinator (Apis dorsata) health and behaviour, and human public health — rather than treating each incident as an isolated news item. We synthesise literature on climate-driven pollinator phenology and displacement, giant-honey-bee nesting and migratory ecology, colony defensive-behaviour physiology, and mass-envenomation clinical outcomes, and combine this with a retrospective, source-verified review of the Unnao incidents and comparable Indian events. Because no dataset directly enumerates mass-stinging events against climatic, land-use and demographic covariates, and because primary climate/land-cover/biodiversity datasets could not be retrieved or processed in this study's working environment, we present a structured secondary-data synthesis rather than a fitted statistical or geospatial model. On this basis we propose a conceptual pathway — climate stress and habitat disruption driving pollinator displacement, which increases spatial overlap between colonies and human activity and thus the probability of defensive mass-stinging encounters — and introduce a preliminary, unvalidated Pollinator–Human Conflict Risk Framework and indicative Index (PHCRI) intended to guide future field research, not to serve as an operational tool. We distinguish throughout between established mechanism, plausible hypothesis and unverified media report, and conclude with a multi-stage research programme, conservation- and public-health-oriented recommendations, and a candid account of evidentiary limitations.