BELIEF IN ALLAH || Contemporary scientists describe the world of the bee
Contemporary scientists describe the world of the bee 1
Science has advanced nowadays, telling us much about the wonders of creation and the mysteries of the universe. The scientists have confirmed for us that which we already knew about bees being divided into three groups: the queen bee, the male bees and the worker bees.
The queen bee is the mother of the whole hive; all the bees in the hive are her children. The queen bee lays between 1500 and 2000 eggs each day with the sun rise; the number may even reach 3500. This continues throughout the reproductive season, which starts in early spring and ends in late summer.
The huge number of eggs serves to make up for the continual shortfall which happens to bees. For the bee's lifespan is short, lasting 5-7 weeks. Hence the hive needs new generations in large numbers to support the hive and to make up for the continual shortfall, so that the hive will continue to provide the necessities of the bee's world and protect the bees from enemies and danger, otherwise the hive would cease to exist.
One of the wonders of the way in which Allah has created the bee is that the queen bee lays her eggs in houses built by the workers in different sizes. The largest houses are prepared for future queens, and the eggs which are laid in these houses will become queens. The eggs which the queen lays in the smaller houses, which are 1/4 of an inch across, will become male bees, and the eggs that are laid in the small houses which are 5 inches across will become worker bees. It remains for us to note that the queen bee deposits three or four sperms with the worker eggs so that the eggs will be fertilized and will become worker bees, whilst she lays unfertilized eggs in the houses of male bees.
Another of the wonders of the way in which Allah has created the bee is that it does not mate except in the air when it is flying. There is a reason for this. The male bee cannot mate with the queen when she is sitting on the ground, because the male organ remains latent and invisible and can only emerge when it is soaring in the air, when air- sacs that exist in the male bee fill with air, exerting pressure on the male member, which then emerges.
One of the wonders of the way in which Allah has created the virgin queen bee is that she is able to call the male to mate with her, by making sounds which attract the male. She comes out of the hive and hovers around it, issuing these sounds, which are heard not only by the males in her hive, but in all the neighbouring hives. So groups of males come out and follow the queen, who keeps flying fast in the huge space; the strongest and fastest male is the one who gets to mate with her, but he loses his life in the process, because after mating he loses his male organ, which stays in the queen, and this results in his bleeding to death.
The reader may ask how the males hear the queen's call. The answer is that Allah has equipped all bees with sensory antennae, consisting of connected rings, twelve in males, and eleven in workers and queens consisting a number of holes.
The number of holes in the sensory antennae of the male is 2800, in the worker it is 2400 and in the queen it is 1600.
The sensory antennae of bees work like a radio antenna; they are used to detect the sound made by the queen, and other sounds. They are also used to smell, hear and feel.
If a bee - worker, male or queen - loses its antennae, it cannot fulfil its role, because most of its senses - hearing, smell and touch - are concentrated in the antennae, as stated above.
The formation of the male bee suits the role for which it has been created. It is large and strong, it eats a lot and it does not do anything. It does not gather nectar, or make it, or build, or guard the hive. Even its food is placed in its mouth by the workers. All that it is able to do is to fertilize the queen. Therefore after it has played its role, the worker bees stop feeding it. They rather, attack the male members and kill or expel them.
We should also note that the number of males is small in relation to the total number of bees; there are no more than two hundred males in a hive.
The worker bees form the largest number in the hive, and are the active element in it. They are the ones that perform various tasks and difficult missions.
They are the ones that collect nectar, gather pollen, make honey, prepare the queen's special food, build the honeycomb in which the honey is kept, raise the new generations of bees, guard the hive, keep it clean, maintain it and even ventilate and heat it.
The various tasks in the hive are distributed as specialized tasks, and these specialized tasks are connected to the age of the bee. At every stage in the bee's life there is a task which it does, and the longer a bee lives, the more tasks she does in turn. Thus when a bee has completed her lifespan, she will have done all the tasks required for the upkeep of the hive. We may note that the bee starts with easy tasks which do not require a great effort, and ends with the most difficult task, which is going about in the fields to gather nectar and pollen and water, then making and storing honey. We may also note that the tasks become progressively more difficult according to the characteristics that Allah (SWT), has bestowed upon the bee. Each task that the bee does is suited to the physical characteristics enabling her to play the new role and do the new task.
During the first two days of her life, the worker bee cleans the houses from which the newly-hatched bees have emerged. She cleans these houses and prepares them for the next generation. The queen will not lay eggs in these houses until she has inspected them and found them to be perfectly clean.
On the third and fourth days, she takes care of the young worker and male bees which are older than three days, bringing to them something which the scientists call "bee's bread," a mixture of honey and pollen, which she takes from what the bees have stored in the hexagonal cells (of the hive).
From the fifth day to the twelfth day, she works to feed the queen bee with the royal food which the latter eats all her life. This special food is also fed to the small worker and male bees during the first three days of their lives. The bees do this particular task at this age (5-12 days) because of the emergence at that time of special glands on both sides of the oesophagus, which enable the bee to manufacture the royal food.
After the twelfth day, the bee is able to fly, but she does not go far. All that she does is learn and practise. Her main task from day 12 to day 18 is to build the wax honeycomb which is prepared for storing honey, and raising the new generation of bees.
The reason why the bee performs this task at this stage in its life is because it grows four pairs of glands on the rings of its abdomen, and from this wax, by using its jaws, the bee at this age builds these houses which are so perfectly constructed with precise dimensions and geometrical shapes of the utmost beauty and order.
On the nineteenth and twentieth days, the bee cleans and guards the hive. After the twentieth day, she goes out to the fields and gathers nectar and pollen, and makes honey, and brings water to the hive. This final stage forms the largest part of the bee's life cycle.
Generations of bees come and go, and the bees progress through this sequence of tasks which ensures that all jobs are done continually, without allocating groups of bees to do one task all their life; each stage of life has its own specialty.
Glory be to the One, the Only, the Unique, the Self-Sufficient Master, Who has created these small beings, and taught them to do these tasks with such precision. This beauty and wonder point to the existence of the All-Knowing, All-Aware.
Among the wonders of the way in which Allah has formed the bee is that He has given it two stomachs, one of which it uses to collect all the raw materials derived from the nectar of flowers, or to carry water, and bring it to the hive, and the other it uses only for its own food, to digest it and be nourished by it.
Another of the wonders of the bee is that when it collects in its first stomach all the nectar that it gathers, it does not simply transport it; whilst it is bringing it to the hive, it performs the preliminary process required to turn it into honey, by producing the yeast that is required for this process.
The bee needs pollen for a variety of purposes in the hive. Its Creator has equipped it with special hollow pouches, called pollen sacs, for storing this pollen, on the outside of its hind legs. He (Allah) has given it something that looks like brushes on the inside ankle of its hind legs, which the bee uses to sweep up the pollen and collect it in the pollen sacs.
Another of the amazing features that the scientists have discovered in bees is the gland in the bee's back which the scientists call Nasanov's gland. This gland produces a special scent, and amazingly the bees of each hive have their own scent which distinguishes them from the bees of other hives. A bee can return to its own home from far away by following this unique scent which is distinct from the scent of other bees. The doorkeepers and guards of the hive recognize the bees which belong to their hive by the distinctive scent emitted by the bee.
What is amazing is that bees are able to agree upon a new scent if there is a reason for doing so. For example, when a group of bees set out to form a new hive, the members of the new hive agree upon by a new scent. By way of experiment, scientists mixed one group of bees with another, and found that after the bees had mixed, they agreed upon one new scent that distinguished them from others.
Another of the wonders of bees is that they build six-sided houses of pure wax which are completely airtight. But when they seal the doors of the houses which contain the larvae, they mix the wax with pollen, which allows air in through the grains of pollen, so the larvae stay alive. If their Lord did not inspire them to do this, the larvae would die and the bees would become extinct and vanish from the face of the earth.
Our Lord has told us about the things we have mentioned here, in eloquent aayaat (verses) which invite us to think about and ponder the wondrous way in which He (SWT), has guided the bee:
وَ اَوۡحٰی رَبُّکَ اِلَی النَّحۡلِ اَنِ اتَّخِذِیۡ مِنَ الۡجِبَالِ بُیُوۡتًا وَّ مِنَ الشَّجَرِ وَ مِمَّا یَعۡرِشُوۡنَ ﴿ۙ۶۸ ثُمَّ کُلِیۡ مِنۡ کُلِّ الثَّمَرٰتِ فَاسۡلُکِیۡ سُبُلَ رَبِّکِ ذُلُلًا ؕ یَخۡرُجُ مِنۡۢ بُطُوۡنِهَا شَرَابٌ مُّخۡتَلِفٌ اَلۡوَانُهٗ فِیۡهِ شِفَآءٌ لِّلنَّاسِ ؕ اِنَّ فِیۡ ذٰلِکَ لَاٰیَۃً لِّقَوۡمٍ یَّتَفَکَّرُوۡنَ ﴿۶۹And your Lord inspired the bee, saying: "Take you habitations in the mountains and in the trees and in what they erect. Then, eat of all fruits, and follow the ways of your Lord made easy [for you].' There comes forth from their bellies, a drink of varying colour wherein is healing for men. Verily, in this is indeed a sign for people who think. (Qur'an 16: 68-69)
The Muslims were guided to the great benefits that exist in honey, but those who have gone astray from the guidance of Allah have only recently discovered the benefits in it. Researchers have discovered amazing facts. They have found out that honey is both food and medicine. It is a high quality food that contains features that can hardly be found elsewhere, and it is a medicine which can be used to treat almost all diseases. Science is still discovering new benefits in honey every day.
How do bees tell one another where food is
One of the things noted by contemporary scientists is the way in which bees tell one another where food is to be found. Dr. Yusuf ‘Izz Uddeen says:
"If one of the worker bees discovers a field or a certain amount of vegetation which it thinks is a source of food, it goes back to the colony to tell the rest of the workers about the treasure that it has found. It does this by performing a ritual dance which it does by instinct, without knowing why it does so.
This strange dance has a certain significance, during which its body makes angles which refer to the angle of the sun. If the field that the bee has discovered is near to the colony, the dance in this case is different from the dance which it performs if the field is further away.
From these dances, the bees know that the field of clover or other flowering plants from which they gather their food, is a certain distance away, and that they have to travel at a certain angle in relation to the position of the sun in order to get there.
Then some of the workers will perform the same dance, from which the bee which discovered the field will be sure that the other bees have understood what she was trying to tell them. Then the other bees will fly off and head directly for the field, to gather more food. The bee which made the discovery conveys a number of pieces of information to the other bees in the colony by her dance. If we humans tried to match the bee's achievement in understanding these mysteries by drawing diagrams, it would take us no less than twenty minutes, if we had sufficient understanding of mathematics. But the bee understands that in an instant, and flies directly to the field in a straight line to get what it needs of food.
This is an amazing thing which we cannot explain unless we believe in the existence of Divine inspiration whereby the Creator of these small beings which are not able to think or reason, has enabled them to do what they need."
The bee sees a colour that we do not see
Dr. Yusuf also tells us that another of the bee's wonders is that it is able to see "a colour which we humans are unable to see or imagine. This colour is ultra-violet, which we see as black, so the bee is able to see ultra-violet rays." Then he explains to us the reason behind the bee's ability to see this colour:
"The reason for that is that these rays are the only ones which are able to penetrate clouds.
Bees may live in areas where there is cloud cover for much of the year, and it is essential for them to see the sun in order to know the way to the fields where their food is. This is the reason why bees are able to see this ultra-violet colour: this enables them to see the sun through the clouds, so they do not die of hunger when the sun is hidden behind the clouds. This is a wondrous fact which indicates that there is a Creator Who controls and decrees and know what He is doing, and that the ability to see this colour could not have been acquired by bees with the passage of time. It has to have been present from the very moment that Allah created bees, otherwise bees would have become extinct in those (cloudy) areas a long time ago."
Note:
1. The information given here is adapted from the book An-Nahlah tusabbiḥ Allah, by Muhammad Hasan Homṣi.
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