Sura (Chapter) 16 in the Quran is entitled "The
Bee."
"And your Lord inspired the
bee: build homes in mountains and trees, and in (the hives) they build for you. Then eat
from all the fruits, following the design of your Lord, precisely. From their bellies
comes a drink of different colors, wherein there is healing for the people. This should be
(sufficient) proof for people who reflect." (Quran, 16:68-69)
So it is
God's inspiration to build the hives, to eat from the fruits, and to create the honey.
It is God's inspiration in the efficient way honeybees thrive.
Within a
honeybee hive, there are three types of bees - queen, worker and drone. There is a single
queen bee. Her only job is to lay eggs. She lacks the glands to make wax, the tongue to
gather nectar, she has a smaller brain. She
is fed, groomed, defended to the death. She
has no maternal instinct - she only lays the eggs, they are cared for by the workers.
There are
maybe 50,000 workers in a hive, all female. They instinctively care for the egg2,
feeding them in proper proper proportion to what they will become. The future queens are
given a special formula called "royal jelly," and they are sealed and protected
until they begin to emerge after about 16 days. The
first new queen may seek out and eat all the others, or two emerging
simultaneously may fight to the death.
Five to ten
days later, on pure instinct, the queen flies out. The
third type of bee, the drones - chase her, and perhaps 5 will catch her and mate with her
in the air. Then they fall dead. Drones
live only a few months anyway, and their only job is to mate with a queen. Once this is accomplished, the workers will refuse
to feed the drones, who are incapable of gathering their own food. And the workers may not allow them into the hive. So they will starve or freeze once their job is
done.
Meanwhile,
the queen who has been mated will retain the genital organs from the drones to produce
millions of sperm to last the rest of her life, maybe 5 or 6 years. If the old queen in the hive is too old, she may
be allowed to stay until she dies. Otherwise,
she will fly away leading a swarm of workers to establish a hive. Scientists have no idea who decides which workers
will go and which will stay. It is done instinctively.
The workers
within a hive do all the work. Their lives progress from one job to another. The first few days, they work, clean up, keeping
the hive free of dirt and debris. Then they
are promoted to feeding the larvae - a big job as each larva be fed 1300 times a day.
At about ten
days old, they move on to receiving food from the gatherers and storing it in the combs,
also working on expanding and repairing the combs. Then
they guard the entrance and make short exploratory flights outside. At about three weeks old, they begin gathering
food. The rest of their lives, just a few
weeks, is spent hauling loads as heavy as themselves from dawn to dusk. They have an incredible sense of directon. They zip along at about 12 MPH, visiting thousands
of flowers and finding their way back home unerringly.
In God's
beautiful system, the flowers and the bees are dependent on each other. The color and smell of the flower is not for man,
although we can and should enjoy it. It is to
attract the bees to insure the flower's survival. And
if the flower did not produce nectar and pollen, the bee would not survive.
Only bees
make honey. Artifical attempts have fallen
far short. In a special section of the bee's
stomach, digestion of the nectar begins and an enzyme is added. Back at the hive, the bees regurgitate into cells,
where it is left to thicken. When it is the
proper consistency - "following the design of your Lord precisely"- the cell is
sealed with wax. Created is a delicious food
with healing properties. "From their
bellies comes a drink of different colors, wherein there is healing for the people."
Bees are
very important to man - not just for the honey and wax, but also in pollinating crops and
fruit trees. Many fruit trees, such as the
apple, cherry and peach, will not produce abundantly without bees. And crops such as alfalfa and clover need bees for
pollination. In fact, alfalfa needs two to
three hives per acre for proper seed production. What
a wonderful system.
- Lydia Kelley
