“As bees do.”
Wild bees chase their enemy; so do bees that are kept in hives. And the best thing that the enemy can do is to run for it. The bee is a very little fellow, but when he has made up his mind about anything, he is very determined; he would rather die than be beaten. If he stings you, he will die, because he always leaves the sting in the wound, and it hurts him so much that all he can do is to go away and die.
You will find, as you live and grow up, that your worst enemies are all inside you—in your own heart—things like selfishness and rudeness, and laziness; and the best day’s work you can ever do is to make up your mind to be like the bees, and chase your enemy out, whenever he shows his head.
In the 16th Century, during the confusion following on a time of war, a mob of peasants, assembling at a town in Germany, tried to pillage the house of a minister. Having used all his eloquence to dissuade them, but in vain, he ordered his servants to fetch his beehives, and to throw them in the middle of the furious mob. The effect was sudden. The people scampered off in every direction, and happy were they who escaped un-stung.
Bees are very cleanly creatures; they love clean people, and quiet orderly ways. If you are neat and tidy and clean, and go about your business without flurry and excitement, they will let you handle them, without any trouble. I have often put my hand at the mouth of a hive, and allowed the bees to run over it and play about on it, and they have never offered to sting me.
The hives are a model of neatness. All the honey is stored away in little cells, which are of exactly the same shape, and so contrived that the greatest amount of honey can be kept in the smallest possible space. Any piece of rubbish or dirt that gets into the way of their working is brought to the front and thrown over. If an uncleanly or strong-smelling person tries to come near the hive, they will attack him at once.
It is a thing worth thinking about that the Bible never tells us to store up honey like the bees. I expect the reason is that only the very young and the very poor need this lesson. Most people do too much of that sort of thing, without any teaching.
But Solomon does tell the sluggard to be like the ant, “which provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.” We are all to begin to work in the early hours of the day, and to work while it is light, as heartily and thoroughly as we can, because the time will come when we cannot work. If you don’t learn some things when you are young, the chances are that you never will.
But the ant does not lay up any winter store, although she is very industrious in providing daily food. She lives on flesh and insects, and that kind of stuff cannot be kept very long; it has to be eaten when it is fresh. It is true that she gathers corn, but only to keep her nest dry. In winter, she needs no food, because she dies.
When we come to think of it, the Bee is not such an admirable creature, in this respect, that he does nothing else but hunt around for honey, sucking the sweetness out of every flower. People who do that sort of thing are generally selfish, with hardly any interest in the world but looking out for their own enjoyment. Men have been clever enough to make use of this greediness of the Bee. We know that he will go on storing up honey till he has filled his hive, so we give him a comfortable, roomy box to live in, and provide him with nice clean wooden cupboards, and the silly fellow fills them all. When he has finished, we take away the cupboards, and the honey too.
Honey is sweet, but the Bible says that there is something sweeter than honey—the Commandments of God; “sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.” Yes, when God whispers to your heart that a thing is right, and you give up your own wishes and your own pleasure, in order to do it, you will find that the feeling afterwards is sweeter than honey.
I think that the Bee is a beautiful illustration of the wisdom and goodness and power of God. Within so small a body, only half an inch long, and weighing only two grains, there is machinery for changing the nectar of the flower into one kind of food for himself and another kind of food for the young, and another kind of food for the queen; machinery for making glue for sticking down the coverings of the hive, and for blocking up the holes and keeping the home warm; machinery for making the wax for the cells, and the poison for the enemy, and the honey for the store; together with a trunk almost as long as the body, and a sting so sharp as to be invisible, even when magnified; all this, and a brain besides, scarcely larger than a pin’s head, that knows how to do so many curious, wise things; surely, altogether, the Bee is a wonderful example of the wisdom and goodness and power of God.