Reading for Pleasure
"Out of the eater, something to eat; out of the strong, something sweet." Judges 14:14
On holiday this year I read a most fascinating book, "The Lives of Bees" by American bee expert - and world authority - Thomas Seeley.
Pastors read books for pleasure - always with the squirreling hope of finding a sermon illustration somewhere.
Seeley takes us on a journey - his journey - of bee hunting and bee watching over his whole lifetime. Guess when his interest in bees began? When he was a boy. There's a sermon illustration right there - what we introduce our kids to when they are young has a deep influence on them for the rest of their lives (for weal or woe).
His main purpose in writing is to show how bees live in the wild compared to how we have "tamed" them to live in man-made beehives. Here's the famous Langstroth bee-hive which we've all seen:
And here is a natural beehive, normally up high inside a tree trunk:Thomas Seeley's book is how the bees behave - naturally - in the wild.
Things I learnt about Bees!
Here's what I learnt about bees.
How new hives are formed
Just before new queen bees hatch, the existing queen bee is unsettled by the other bees to encourage her to take off and form a new hive. They feed her less and also encourage her to buzz around the hive more - she gets weaker. Taking the hint, she takes off with 10-20 thousand fellow bees - all her own offsrping - and creates a new hive somewhere else.
Good job she leaves, because as soon as a new queen bee hatches, she kills the existing queen bee and seeks out all the other queen bee larvae and knocks them off too!
The reasons we can domesticate bees
Bees, as we know can be really dangerous, so how come we can encourage them to serve us in making honey and beeswax? Well, first of all, the size of the nest cavity they enjoy is 20-40 litres - which is a size of many things around human beings, such as large pots. So we could say that bees have domesticated humans, rather than the other way round, finding places near us just right to set up shop. Secondly, bees are not aggressive under two cirucumstances, which we've exploited. They're not aggressive when they are filled with honey or when they smell smoke. The smell of smoke is not a signal to escape the hive but a signal to hunker down and save the rest of the nest. So we can use puffs of smoke to make the bees calm down.
The difference between natural and man-made bee hives?
Natural bee hives are spread out from one another by about a kilometer. We put hives next to one another! That is silly, because some bees mistake one hive for another, and placing them all together allows a dangerous mite to spread harming the health of all the hives.
Beehive keepers should separate their hives from one another.
Bees eat pollen and honey
This was new to me. Bees collect three natural products: nectar, pollen and tree sap (and water). They use the sap to waterproof the chamber, they use the pollen and honey as food. Why so much honey? Well, bees are rare - they live throughout the winter and they use the honey to live on during the winter months (and rainy season too - no foraging possible when the rain is tipping it down).
Bumblebees by contrast, do not survive as a hive over the winter. Their hives are much smaller (around 300 bees) and only the queen bee lives over the winter. Just before winter she adds antifreeze to her blood and hibernates! But honey bees live all year round thanks to that delicious stuff called honey! (A hive needs around 20kgs to survive the winter).
Hive organization
A few little points here. When the bees return from collecting pollen or nectar they are met by other bees who take it from them and store it. In the case of the nectar, the collector bees add compounds to it which thicken it up from watery nectar to sticky syrup.
Hard working Bees
On average during one summer the bees of a hive, all together:
- make 4 million foraging trips
- travel 12 million miles
- cover an area of 40 square miles
- each trip is the equivalent of a human 360 mile trip! (since they fly at about 18mph and each trip takes on average 12 minutes, each trip is about 40,000 body lengths)
During the winter to increase the temperature of the hive, the bees exercise wing muscles - without moving their wings - and this generates lots of heat. An olympic athlete generates around 20 watts of power for every kg of weight. But a bee can generate 500 watts of heat for every kg! (No wonder they need all that honey!)
Bees use hexagonal cells rather than circular ones because by doing so they save around 50% building material (beeswax).
They prepare a brood in the winter so they will have plenty of workers for the winter.
What amazing creatures!
How much is there left to know about bees?
Seeley is an unsual scientist! Most scientists tell you they know everything, but on page 290 Seeley lists all the things we do not know. There are lots of mysteries about bees left to be discovered.
A human being can spend all his or her life learning about one of God's creatures and still never get to the end of the knowledge.
So there is lots to do in heaven.
The difference between Seeley (and Attenborough) and Christian
The problem with all unbelieving commentators on nature such as Seeley - and Attenborough - is that they fail to glorify God, the Creator. I know to criticise David Attenborough is to touch a modern saint, but whenever I have watched one of his wonderful programmes, I have always been left profoundly empty.
Why? Because Attenborough does not go far enough. He stops at the creature, rather then ending with the Creator.
None of "nature's" wonders, including the humble honey bee, came about by themselves. All of them are the handiwork of God.
Every time we observe a wonder of creation we should end by saying - or singing - what an amazing God made all of this.
How great Thou art!
