“Busy as a bee” is a way we may describe someone who is always on the go, always hurrying about his appointed duties. And that certainly is the way bees are, for they seem to display almost ceaseless expenditures of energy. In fact, the workers do literally wear themselves out at their work. During the active season, they live for only about six weeks.
But, how do the worker bees come by their characteristic busyness? Certainly not from their parents! Their mother, known as the queen bee, never brings home a single drop of nectar not the least speck of pollen; and the male drones lead the most idle sort of life imaginable. Their only connection with honey is in eating it!
Of course, the queen is not really idle, for she is busy laying up to 2,000 eggs each day. The drones also have an important part in the life of the hive, which they perform during the mating flight. But the point is that neither parent has any experience or personal knowledge of honey production or hive making to pass on to their offspring. The workers, however, know by instinct what they must do and approximately how to do it.
(Researchers have learned that new worker adults do polish their skills through a type of “apprenticeship program.” They progress through a series of tasks such as hive cleanup, feeding the next crop of larvae, receiving and storing incoming food supplies, guarding the hive, and, finally, gathering food in the fields.)
Not only are the workers unable to learn from their parents, they also are constructed differently in some respects. For example, their hind legs are modified to provide built-in pollen baskets, which neither drones nor queens possess.
Yet queens, drones and workers all begin as undifferentiated eggs, as like as peas in a pod. The differences come about through later selections. In the case of drones, (at the time of laying): the queen withholds fertilization from those eggs. They then develop as male drones. Worker bees, which are sexually undeveloped females, grow from normally fertilized eggs.
But when a need for additional queens arrives – as when it is time to split the hive, for instance – several larvae from fertilized eggs are selected to receive a special diet of “royal jelly.” This “royal jelly” is a unique food substance produced by glands in the heads of worker bees. Without it, the fertilized eggs grow into more worker bees. With it the larvae develop sexually and become queens.
So we see that the life of a hive depends upon a very complex chain of circumstances: three types of bees are essential for the continuance of life – queens, drones and workers. Without any one of the types, the hive would quickly die. Yet all three begin as identical eggs. Somehow the queen “knows” which to fertilize and which not to fertilize. Somehow the nursery attendant bees know which larvae to feed royal jelly, and which not to. Somehow the workers know how to build wax cells to hold honey and larvae. Somehow the workers have built-in pollen baskets on their legs. Somehow the drones develop from unfertilized eggs – but grow up with the capacity to produce fertility!
So many “somehows”! It is impossible to relate them all to a gradual evolutionary process, in which minute change after minute change took place over eons of time. It all had to happen in an extremely short time-frame, or the world would never have known bees!
But while this is a major headache for believers in evolution, it is no problem at all if we take God at His word, as the Creator of all things. In the Bible we read: “God made the animals of the earth after their kind, and the livestock after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind. God saw that it was good.” (Genesis 1:25)
In other words, God created each form of life as unique. None has to fit into some supposed evolutionary “ladder;” and this accounts for the amazing diversity of life forms and life processes we find upon the earth.
How wonderful it is to be assured that we ourselves are put on earth by God’s direct fiat, and not by some random happenstance of fate! We can rejoice with David, the sweet singer of Israel, that “Your eyes saw my body. In your book they were all written, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there were none of them.” (Psalm 139:16)
And just as God told the prophet Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the belly, I knew you…” (Jeremiah 1:5), so also did He know us as individuals, and call us into being.
Furthermore, Jesus Christ expressly stated that not even a sparrow falls to the ground without God’s consent – and, He said we are of much greater value in God’s eyes than many sparrows! Be comforted, therefore, and seek unto God for meaning in your life, and for salvation, which He freely offers through His Son, Christ Jesus.
(All Scripture is quoted from the World English Bible translation.)