Page 80 - The Miracle of the Honeybee
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78                  THE MIRACLE OF THE HONEYBEE




                   50
                                             Swarming period
                    40


                   Hive population (x 1000)   20          The population of the hive
                    30
                                                          falls slightly in winter, but
                                                          starts to rise again before
                                                          spring since new workers
                                                          are being raised. This pop-
                                                          ulation rise continues until
                    10
                                                          swarming. (James and
                                                          Carol Gould, The Honey
                     0                                    Bee, p. 27.)
                        Winter    Spring  Summer     Autumn



              avoiding any risk to the mating of the queen. The question therefore
              arises: How do the bees take such an important decision? Did they all as-
              semble together to work out this strategy? Or did they, by chance, dis-
              cover that it was a good strategy and somehow understand that it was
              necessary and decide to continue with it?
                 Bees cannot of course do any of this and make such decisions of their
              own accord. They have no decision-making mechanisms, nor the con-
              sciousness with which to outline a strategy and then put it into action.
              Like all other living things on Earth, they are fully submitted to God.
                 Were the number of male bees to be limited, then a number of problems
              might arise during the fertilization process. For example, some of them
              might fail to find the queen, or else fall prey to their many predators. That
              might lead to the queen’s spermatheca not being filled sufficiently, and
              thus to the eventual production of an insufficient number of bees in the
              hive. Yet no such thing ever actually happens. There are sufficient males in
              every hive. The workers conform to God’s inspiration and look after the
              drones, who wander around the hive until the end of the mating period
              and do no work.
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