QURAN ON HONEY BEE

God Inspired The Female Honey Bee

Important Facts About The Honey Bee

Before telling you this miracle present in Holy Quran, let me tell you some interesting facts about the Honey Bee. Only eight surviving species of honey bee are recognized, with a total of 43 subspecies. Honey bees represent only a small fraction of almost 20,000 known species of bees. Honey bees have three castes: drones, workers, and queens. Drones are male, while workers and queens are female. Body Size of a honey bee is 1cm to 3cm and its body divided into Head, Thorax, and Abdomen.

Honey Bee Colony

Honey Bee live in colonies. They have three categories inside a colony: one queen bee – a female, up to a few thousand drone bees or males and tens of thousands of female worker bees. Male Bee or Drones are stingless and can’t make honey. Drones are larger in size than the female worker bees but less than Queen.

Queen Bee

Queen is the largest in size. Queen’s only task is to lay eggs i.e reproduction. No other female is able to mate and reproduce. Once mated, queens may lay up to 2,000 eggs per day. Queen bees are created when worker bees feed a single female larvae an exclusive diet of a food called Royal Jelly. Queens are produced in oversized cells and develop in only 16 days.  Queen Bee mating occurs in mid-air, mid-flight, and 10–40 m above ground. Virgin queens go on mating flights away from their home colony to a drone congregation area, and mate with multiple drones before returning. The drones die in the act of mating. Queen honey bees do not mate with drones from their home colony. Eggs are laid singly in a cell in a wax honeycomb, produced and shaped by the worker bees. Using her spermatheca, the queen can choose to fertilize the egg she is laying. Larvae are initially fed with royal jelly produced by worker bees, later switching to honey and pollen. The exception is a larva fed solely on royal jelly, which will develop into a queen bee.

Males / Drones

Drones primarily exist for the purpose of reproduction. They are expelled from the hive during the winter months when the hive’s primary focus is warmth and food conservation. A drone is characterized by eyes that are twice the size of those of worker bees and queens, and a body size greater than that of worker bees. They use large eyes to locate queens during mating flights. They do not defend the hive or kill intruders, and do not have a stinger and gather neither nectar nor pollen. The males do not contribute to the defense or cleaning of the hive, gathering food, or making of the honeycomb and honey. The only function of the male bees in the hive is to mate with the Queen bee.

Should a drone succeed in mating, the first thing that happens is all of the drone’s blood in his body rushes to his endophallus (a penis like reproduction organ) which causes him to lose control over his entire body. His body falls away, leaving a portion of his endophallus attached to the queen. The process of ejaculation is explosive so much that it rapture part of the abdomen of drone. The process is sometimes audible to the human ear like a popping sound. The ejaculation is so powerful that it ruptures the endophallus, disconnecting the drone from the queen. The bulb of the endophallus is broken off inside of the queen during mating so drones mate only once, fell down on the ground and die shortly after.

Remaining males and the males who survive the mating flights both thrown out of the hive by the female workers and they then die soon because of starvation as they are dependent on female workers for their food.

Female Worker Bees

Worker bees are produced from an egg that the queen has selectively fertilized from stored sperm. Workers typically develop in 21 days. Workers shows a wider range of behaviors than either queens or drones. Their duties change with age in the following order 1- Cleaning out their own cell after eating through their capped brood cell, 2- Feed brood, 3- Receive nectar, 4- Clean hive, 5- Guard duty, 6- Foraging. Under certain conditions e.g if the colony becomes queenless, a worker may develop ovaries.

Bee Dance / Waggle dance

Worker bees cooperate to find food and use a pattern of “dancing” known as the bee dance or waggle dance. It is a movement in circles Or like figure-eight movement. By performing this dance, successful foragers can share information about the direction and distance to patches of flowers, water sources and new site locations for nesting. The bee who locate the source return to the hive and inform the others by performing circular or figure-eight like motions like a dance that contains information about the discovery, location, and even distance. The round dance is performed when the resource is about 10 metres away from the hive, transitional dances are performed when the resource is at a distance of 20 to 30 metres away from the hive and when it is located at distances greater than 40 metres from the hive, the waggle dance is performed. Bees determine the location of a place by Sun and its angle. Honey bees also perform tremble dances, which recruit receiver bees to collect nectar from returning foragers

Multiple Stomach

In a Bee inside the stomach, there are portions, partitions or crops i.e. it has multiple stomachs. While collecting Nectar the bee store, it in a different portion called the “Honey Stomach” and return to its hive. At the back of the stomach, there is a valve that prevents the passing of nectar into the rear portion of the digestive system except for a small amount that is needed for her life.

Bee Hive

The hive is always in a hexagonal shape with every angle almost 120 degrees which now we come to know with the help of computers that it could be the best shape to make as it uses the least wax to make the maximum size of hives. Lastly, for only 500 grams of pure honey, almost 10,000 plus female bees visit millions of flowers, collect nectar and work day and night to produce this little quantity. The color of honey changes according to climate, season, and Nectar source.

Now look that almost 1400 years ago this is what the Quran told us in Surah Nahl 16:68-69

٦٨ وَأَوْحَىٰ رَبُّكَ إِلَى النَّحْلِ أَنِ اتَّخِذِي مِنَ الْجِبَالِ بُيُوتًا وَمِنَ الشَّجَرِ وَمِمَّا يَعْرِشُونَ

And your Lord inspired to the bee, “Take for yourself among the mountains, houses, and among the trees and [in] that which they construct.

٦٩ ثُمَّ كُلِي مِنْ كُلِّ الثَّمَرَاتِ فَاسْلُكِي سُبُلَ رَبِّكِ ذُلُلًا ۚ يَخْرُجُ مِنْ بُطُونِهَا شَرَابٌ مُخْتَلِفٌ أَلْوَانُهُ فِيهِ شِفَاءٌ لِلنَّاسِ ۗ إِنَّ فِي ذَٰلِكَ لَآيَةً لِقَوْمٍ يَتَفَكَّرُونَ

Then eat from all the fruits and follow the ways of your Lord laid down [for you].” There emerges from their bellies a drink, varying in colors, in which there is healing for people. Indeed in that is a sign for a people who give thought.

Miracle In The Use Of Word “أَوْحَىٰ”

All these highly advanced and technical things cannot be done even by human beings without the guidance and proper training. That is why God used the word “أَوْحَىٰ” that He Himself inspired the bee all this knowledge of performing these tasks.

All Worker Bees Are Female

Further, from the facts presented above, we come to know that the Male bees do not make honey. This was only known recently. However, 1400 years ago, the Quran refers to bees that generate the honey as females. Previously people thought that the worker bees are male bees and reports to a king. The words used (Take) اتَّخِذِي, (Eat) كُلِي and (Follow) فَاسْلُكِي all are for a female subject. Otherwise, God would have used كُلُ, اسْلُكْ, and تَّخِذُ .

Miracle in The Use Of Word “بُطُونِهَا”

Further, there is also another miracle which shows the divine origin of Quran as in verse 69 Quran stresses that in the individual female bee there are abdomens (i.e more than one stomach), which in Arabic is “بُطُونِهَا /butuniha,” the “هَا / ha” points to a single female bee. If the plural of the word “abdomen” was meant to refer to the female bees (i.e multiple bees), then the plural feminine pronoun “ ھنا /hunna” would be connected to the verb “بُطُونِهَا.”. That clearly shows that the noun (Stomach) is plural and the pronoun used is for 3rd person famine singular. This thing that a female worker Bee has multiple stomach portions not known until very recently. Only this one fact is enough for any person to believe in the divine origin of the Quran.