OceanSide church of Christ

 Previous Return to Articles Next 

HONEYBEES:  A REMARKABLE CREATION BY GOD

Victor M. Eskew

 

            It was Day Five of the Creation week.  The previous day, God  had created the hosts of heaven:  the sun, the moon, and the stars.  On this fifth day, He began to fill the Seas and the Earth with all types of living creatures.  “And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and the fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.  And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind:  and God saw that it was good.  And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.  And the evening and the morning were the fifth day” (Gen. 1:20-23).

            When we hear the word “fowl” in this text, we immediately think of all of the different kinds of birds that God created.  The definition of the word, however, is broader than birds alone.  The word means “winged-creatures” or “flying creatures.”  In Leviticus 11:21, it is translated “flying creeping thing.”  This word, therefore, includes bats which are mammals.  It also includes all of the insects that fly.  On Day Five, God created that little creature that we call a honeybee.  It is truly a remarkable creation of the Almighty.  Let’s look at some of the remarkable facts about this little creature made by God’s hand.

            A honeybee only weighs .004 ounces.  It is only .08 inches long.  However, it is a complex creature.  It has five eyes, two stomachs, six legs, four wings, and two antennas.  Its brain is the size of a grain of sugar.  With his eyes, he can see UV light.  He has 170 odorant receptors that give him an incredible sense of smell.  His wings beat at 230 beats per second.  He can fly at a speed of 15 miles per hour.  He is able to navigate by the sun.  He communicates with other bees primarily by touch. 

            The honeybee does remarkable things.  He can produce honey.  He is the only insect that  provides man with food.  He produces wax.  Honeybees can construct a hive that will house their queen and 50,000 to 80,000 bees.  They fly.  They navigate.  They collect nectar from flowers.  They have the ability to reproduce.  Too, they feed themselves.  The bees eat honey.  The queen bee is fed something the worker bees produce called “royal jelly.” 

            There are three kinds of honeybees:  worker bees, drone bees, and the queen bees.  Each of these bees does remarkable things.  The queen bee produces eggs.  She lives to be between 5 to 7 years old.  As she lays her eggs, she determines the sex of the bees.  The how is amazing.  She has the ability to either fertilize the egg or refuse to fertilize the egg.  Fertilized eggs become females.  Unfertilized eggs become males.  The queen lays an egg every 43 seconds.  In one day, she can lay about 2,000 eggs. 

            The ones responsible for giving the queen the sperm to fertilize her eggs are the drones.  These are male honeybees.  This is their sole purpose in the hive.  They give their sperm to the queen and she stores it in her body.   She can store it up to four years.  The first fertilization process happens a few days after a queen is born.   She takes flight for 48 to 72 hours.  During this flight, she will be fertilized by twenty to thirty drones.  She will then go to the hive.  Most of the time, she never leaves the hive again.  The drones males cannot sting.  The drone bees have the shortest life.  They usually only live a few days.

            The third group of honeybees is called the worker bees.  These bees are females.  They have the ability to sting.  These are the bees that collect the nectar from flowers.  They have a long tongue that is used to collect the nectar.  It is stored in one of their bellies that is called the “honey belly.”  To fill this belly, they must drink from approximately 1,000 flowers.  The bee’s stomach has enzymes in it that immediately allows the nectar to begin to turn to honey.  These enzymes break the nectar down and make it thicker.  The worker bee is the most abundant of the bees.  She lives about 6 or 7 weeks.

            When the worker bee returns to the hive, she immediately regurgitates the nectar into the mouth of another worker bee who swallows is.  The enzymes in her stomach continue to break down the nectar and turn it into honey.  This process continues from bee to bee to bee.  Some refer to this a the “vomit chain.”  When the nectar (honey) reaches a certain consistency, it is deposited into the hexagon-shaped storage units in the comb.  The worker bee is responsible for the production of the wax and the building of the comb as well.  When the substance is put in the comb, it is still too liquified to be honey.  Two honeybees will fan the substance until the water evaporates and the finished product is made. 

            Go back and read this article again.  Even this rudimentary article, will cause you to marvel at the honeybee.  We now have a question.  Are we to believe that the honeybee evolved from some other creature over hundreds of millions of years?  Did the queen evolve?  Did the drones evolve?  Did the worker bees evolve?  Did their ability to fly evolve?  Did their ability to navigate evolve?  Did their ability to communicate evolve?  Did the process they use to produce honey evolve?  Did their reproductive abilities evolve?  It is ridiculous to think that all of these intricate things including their little, but complex, bodies just accidentally evolved into what we have today.  Here is an interesting fact.  At some point, their evolution stopped.  Bees are said to have been in existence a long, long time according to the evolutionists.  Why did they stop evolving?

            The fact is that God made the bees.  In His wisdom, He created their structures.  He created them to fulfill specific purposes.  Man is grateful for the tasty honey the bees produce.  Too, we are thankful for the bees that help to pollenate the flowers of our world.  It was God who made all of the winged creatures.  We should praise God for creating the honeybee.