Page 76 - The Miracle of the Honeybee
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74                  THE MIRACLE OF THE HONEYBEE


              for each worker has been established as an
                                      62
              average of 0.1μg per day. It is the queen
              who maintains order in the hive, though       Everything in the
              it’s of course impossible for her to take a   heavens and the
              personal interest in all its tens of thousands
                                                            earth glorifies God.
              of individual member bees.
                                                            He is the Almighty,
                 The queen substance is constantly
                                                            the All-Wise.
              spread through the hive by up to a dozen
                                                            (Surat al-Hadid: 1)
              bees that are always around her and care
              for her. These lick up the chemical from the
              queen’s body and transmit it to the other
              bees during food transfer, which takes place by mouth. During this
              process, the odor released by the queen is quickly transmitted to all other
              members of the colony. This means that all of the colony’s members share
              a common odor, distinguishing them from members of other colonies.
                 Any reduction in this secretion sets the workers into action, because
              they take it as a signal that that their queen has grown old, or that their
              colony has become excessively large. In either case, the workers need to
              take a number of measures. 63


                 When the Queen Ages
                 As the queen bee grows older, her strength declines, and the conse-
              quences begin to be seen in the hive. The rate of her egg-laying slows
              down, for instance, and most important of all, there is a drop in the quan-
              tity of the substance she secretes. As we have seen, the odor of this sub-
              stance prevents the workers from raising a new queen, so such indications
              are a sign for the worker bees. As its level reduces, the workers immedi-
              ately begin to construct new royal cells and set about raising new queens.
                 Under normal circumstances, it is out of the question for a bee colony
              to suddenly find itself without a queen. That’s because when circum-
              stances suddenly change and the colony finds itself facing the danger of
              having no queen, the worker bees immediately start feeding some of the
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