Ram Krishna Singh's poem is a quiet lament for something already lost. It begins with a question: when the flowers have dried, who will feed the bees, and who will notice the hands that tend the honeycombs among the orange groves? The poem then imagines the bees, or perhaps the people who cared for them, gathering to remember "the golden days" and even trying to compose a new hymn to break whatever "spell" has fallen. The hives, though, have been buried in "smoky hush," and the cause is left unnamed.
The speaker's feeling is a gentle, resigned sadness. Those hopeful gestures of memory and song sound tender, but the last stanza cuts them off: "I know / the bees won't return." There is no anger here, only a plain acceptance. The image of "naked trees" makes the mood bare and hollow. Judging by the imagery, the poem may also hint at wider loss in the natural world, but it leaves that suggestion for the reader to carry.