Anyone who wants to live in a land of milk and honey should be thankful for – and willing to protect — honeybees (apis mellifera). Without these industrious insects, there wouldn’t be fruit, nuts, and crops, let alone honey for us to enjoy. One-third of the food we eat needs these amazing little busy-buzzing pollinators.
Lesson One: God made a complex world in which everything has its purpose. We are called to be good stewards of the domain He gave us.
A honeybee’s lifespan is a mere 2-6 weeks. They spend twenty-one days incubating in a brood cell and go to work immediately when they climb out. A honeybee’s first job is cleaning the hive and caring for the larvae. Within a week, she’s feeding ordinary larvae with pollen and nectar and royal jelly (a milky white syrup high in protein) to queen larvae. She then tends the queen (the egg-laying machine), cleaning and feeding her. At ten days, our little worker bee has her first sojourn outside the hive for an orientation flight. She takes a turn as be a wax-maker constructing new cells for pollen and honey storage. She tends the nectar brought home by other sisters, adding enzymes and water, fanning her wings to keep the temperature just right. She may go on guard duty, ever ready to chase off invaders. At twenty days of age, she reports as a scout or forager, collecting nectar, pollen, water, and resin from buds that will be converted into propolis, an antibiotic putty to seal cracks in the hive. She can fly up to six miles from the hive to find food. Her four little wings flap up to 11,400 times per minute, and she can fly up to 25 mph. She dances to share location information, wagging to and fro, letting sisters know which way to go. Our little honeybee will fly from flower to flower and back to the hive with her load of goodies until her wings literally wear out and fall off.
Lesson Two: Every person is important and has a job to do, and every job is important to the health, well-being, and prosperity of the whole family/community/state/country.
The males (drones) come from unfertilized eggs and stay in the brood cell twenty-three days to the worker bee’s twenty-one. From the moment they climb out, they lead a life of leisure. The drones secrete a pleasing pheromone to their sisters. The drones hang out together, waiting for a virgin queen to appear on the scene. A colony only has one queen. When another emerges, a swarm follows. The drones chase after her. Those who catch her may have a moment of joyful purpose, but they end up stuck, their reproductive part and half their abdomen torn away. The rest of the drones return to laze about the hive, charming wastrels. When winter comes, the hard-working honeybees expel or ruthlessly murder the drones. The cold months are long, and supplies are limited.
Lesson Three: Do your part. Those who refuse to work shouldn’t expect a piece of the pie made by others.
Sometime around February, the bees take a “cleansing flight” after SIP during winter, and they dump the excrement accumulated inside their bodies over the winter months.
Lesson Four: Keep your house clean! Guard your heart, for it sets the course of your life.