“How sweet are Thy words unto my taste! Yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!”
Psalm 119:103
Without the work of the honeybee, the world would soon starve. Its work in pollinating blossoms is essential to the development of many kinds of fruits, vegetables, grains and other plant foods and also the reproduction of many other flowering plants.
The hive of the honeybee is a marvelous example of community living. As many as fifty thousand bees will work together in unity, building a hive of honeycombs made up of hexagonal cells. In one square inch, there are exactly 4.83 cells. How do they make such an exact measurement? No one knows other than God, who has created them and given them their unusual skills.
Whether building honeycombs in a hive provided by a beekeeper or in a hollow tree or in any other location, the work always follows the same pattern. Young worker bees produce beeswax in special glands in their bodies. This wax is attached to the ceiling; then, working down, the cells are built one by one all the way to the base. Several groups of bees begin building from different parts of the ceiling, gradually all coming together to make a complete comb. Where the sections join together, the result is still the same - all adjoining cells measure exactly 4.83 to the square inch!
Thousands of bees are busy right now, each adding its tiny bit to what others have started. The walls of the waxen cells, only two or three thousandths of an inch thick, are so fragile that you could easily crush them in your fingers, yet strong enough to support the weight of the comb as well as the weight of the bees working on it.
Once the comb is completed, the workers then turn their attention to making honey which they use as food. The bee fills a special pouch inside its body with nectar from several blossoms. In the pouch, the sugar and nectar are broken down into two simple sugars. After the nectar is deposited in the hive, most of the water in the nectar evaporates and the liquid becomes thick.
Surely we need not ask where these busy workers get the wisdom needed to build these complex homes, nor how they work together in such unity. God, “which doeth great things and unsearchable; marvelous things without number” (Job 5:9), is the One who has set their ways and kept them in the same pattern since the day He first created them.
As King David thought on God’s ways which provide so many benefits to man, he said, “Oh that men would praise the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men!” (Psalm 107:8). But His greatest work of all was on the cross where He became the Saviour of sinners. Is He your Saviour?
ML-11/24/2002