Introduction: The Life of Honeybees
Civil wars, slaughter, problems within families, people who kill without a qualm, children living on the streets, people freezing to death from a lack of shelter, murderers no older than children, youth gangs, civic and political corruption ...
When one thinks about these social problems, which have become part and parcel of today’s daily life, the same imperfection can be seen at the root of them all. This same common imperfection also underlies such corrupt moral values as injustice, fraud, hypocrisy and ruthlessness that cause these problems to emerge.
This grave imperfection is that people fail to think—and thus, fail to see the truth. For such people, all that matters is their own interests, their own lives. They are unconcerned by what goes on around them. At the same time, what limited topics they do think about, again center upon themselves. For that reason, they live within the confines of their own rights and wrongs. They regard living the course of their daily lives as sufficient, never sparing a thought for vital issues such as the reason for their presence in this world.
They never consider the features of the living things around them, or how it is that these have emerged so flawlessly and in such variety. They are therefore unaware that all these things—their own bodies, the equilibrium in the heavens, in short, everything and anything—are created by God. They are unable to properly appreciate Him, the Creator of the entire universe, and His infinite might. They never become aware of the reason for their own creation and the fact that they owe responsibilities to God. The fact is, however, that a great many verses in the Qur’an emphasize the importance of thinking and the fact that only thoughtful people will heed advice.
Verses refer to people who think and thus achieve awareness of the might of God:
In the creation of the heavens and the Earth, and the alternation of night and day, there are signs for people with intelligence: those who remember God, standing, sitting and lying on their sides, and reflect on the creation of the heavens and the Earth: “Our Lord, You have not created this for nothing. Glory be to You! So safeguard us from the punishment of the Fire.” (Surah Al ‘Imran: 190-191)
The aim of this book is to overcome this mental idleness by presenting yet another of God’s miracles of creation. In addition, the honeybee is one of the creatures to which the Qur’an draws our attention. In Surat an-Nahl, God reveals that bees act in the light of His inspiration:
Your Lord revealed to the bees: “Build dwellings in the mountains and the trees, and also in the structures which men erect. Then eat from every kind of fruit and travel the paths of your Lord, which have been made easy for you to follow.” From inside them comes a drink of varying colors, containing healing for humanity. There is certainly a sign in that for people who reflect. (Surat an-Nahl: 68-69)
These verses emphasize bees’ making their own homes, taking nourishment from every kind of flower and producing honey. As you’ll see in the following chapters, all such activities in the hive are performed by workers. A hive contains worker bees, a queen bee, and male bees (or drones). Workers carry out almost all the tasks in the hive. In addition, the queen has the extremely important function of ensuring the hive’s continuation. The sole function of the males in the hive is to fertilize their queen. They carry out this task within their short life spans, and then die.
In addition to examining these features of bees, this book also considers many other matters, such as how tens of thousands of bees are able to live together in the hive with no difficulty, how they follow directions, and how they produce honey. With verses from the Qur’an, we shall once again be seeing that there is no arbitrary and random “struggle for survival” either in nature or in the lives of bees, contrary to what the theory of evolution would have us believe.