Kingless Folk, and Other Addresses on Bible Animals

by John Adams

II.—HONEY.

After the construction of the cells comes the gathering of the honey. Honey, as every boy knows, is the thick, sweet fluid which bees gather from the cups of flowers. Or in the language of myth and fable, it is the veritable nectar of the gods. The mouth of the bee is framed for the purpose. It is so constructed that it forms a sort of proboscis or tongue by means of which the insects suck up the nectarine juice. It serves both as a mouth and a pump through which the liquid passes into the first stomach, and thus is carried to the hive.

The abundance of honey is frequently mentioned in Holy Scripture. Palestine itself is described as "a land that floweth with milk and honey." And we remember that on one occasion Jonathan, the Son of Saul, was faint and weary, and when he saw honey dripping on the ground from the abundance and weight of the comb, he took it up on the end of his staff, and ate sufficient to restore his strength (1 Sam. xiv. 27). John the Baptist also was evidently in no danger of starving from lack of food, when the wild bees afforded him a plentiful supply of the very material which was needed to correct the deficiencies of the dried locusts which he used instead of bread. His food was locusts and wild honey.

There is only one connection in which we find honey prohibited. It was to have no place in the Jewish meat offering (Lev. ii. 11). Everything liable to fermentation was excluded from the altar; and "the same principle covers the prohibition of honey" (Smith's "Religion of the Semites"). "The effect of honey is similar to that of leaven, since it easily changes to acid" (Oehler). Honey then was forbidden on the same principle as an animal with any kind of blemish was forbidden. There must be no defect in the sacrificial lamb, and there must be no fermentation in the meat offering. The offering brought by man must be clean—a spotless sacrifice (and God's Lamb is such), an honest heart, and an earnest, unfeigned prayer. Only the pure in heart shall see God.

III.—POLLEN.

Honey is not the only substance that bees carry home to the hive. They also collect in considerable quantities the fecundating dust or pollen of flowers. If the long tongue is specially adapted for sucking up the one, the hind legs, supplied with a brush of hair, are equally fitted for collecting and conveying the other. When the bee visits the flower in question it dives deep down among the dust-like powder, and comes out again, all covered from head to foot, like a miller well dusted with his meal. But applying the brush of hair which it carries for the purpose, it speedily brushes the pollen all down in the form of a tiny ball, and carries it home on its hind legs to be used in the economy of the hive.

But what is it for? To make bee-bread for the young bees. The hexagonal cells are not all used for the storage of honey. A very large proportion of the comb is set apart for the hatching of the young ones. And these infant bees are voracious eaters. Like other little children, they have to be carefully nursed and attended to, and the sagacious nurses have quite enough to do in providing them with the right kind of food. Ordinary honey is too strong for their infantile digestion, and therefore the honey is mixed with the pollen to render it a fit nourishment for these fastidious babies.

This is the only object the bees have in collecting the pollen; but it is not the only end they serve in the plan of the great Creator. Unknown to themselves they are doing a great work in the propagating of flowers. The fertilising dust of one flower must be conveyed to the corresponding organs of another; and the bee like a village postman, is brought in to convey the necessary love-tokens. Apart from this service rendered by the bee, the wild flowers that deck the fields and highways would soon be conspicuous by their absence.

We cannot, then, go back to the point from which we started, and say that the bee can only be regarded as a savage and dangerous annoyance. It fills a very important place in the economy of nature. As the maker of wax it is the prince of mathematicians; as the gatherer of honey it is the bringer of many choice blessings; and as the collector and distributer of pollen it is at once a sagacious nurse, and one who dispenses a harvest, "sowing the To-be." Well may we sit at its hive and learn wisdom.

The Swallow.