Page 12 - The Miracle of the Honeybee

10 THE MIRACLE OF THE HONEYBEE

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 nour-
ishment 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 contin-
uation. 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 con-
siders 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 pro-
duce honey. With verses from the
Qur’an, we shall once again be
seeing that there is no arbitrary
and random “struggle for sur-
vival” either in nature or in the
lives of bees, contrary to what the
theory of evolution would
have us believe.