Wisdom From Insects

Solomon tells us to consider the ant and be wise. Not knowing much about ants, I would like to lift the lid on a beehive and see what wisdom might be gleaned there.

Like ants and other communal insects, honeybee colonies are superorganisms. The colony as a whole equals more than the sum of its individuals. Let’s see if we can understand the basic social structure of the hive.

Queen

In popular imagination, the queen is matron of a beehive; reality is much more nuanced. Without a healthy, fertile queen, a hive is doomed to collapse, but a queen is equally reliant on worker bees—she cannot even get her own food! She relies on attendant bees to produce and feed her “royal jelly,” which is the only thing she eats. The attendants also keep her clean and function as royal escorts.

Worker Bee

Worker bees perform every task in a colony outside of reproduction. Within minutes of crawling out of its cell, a young worker bee goes to work. Its first role is cleaning. From there it progresses to other tasks inside the hive. Heating, cooling, water carrying, nectar and pollen processing, and acting as royal escorts for the queen are some of the tasks every worker bee participates in during the first several weeks inside the hive. As they reach maturity, guard duty and field work become their main responsibility.

The guard bees are what make most people leery of honeybees. Typically, there will be six to twelve guards on duty at a time. Somehow, they recognize bees from their own hive but will try to prevent all others from entering. If an animal or human approaches the hive, they will sally out to investigate. A reconnaissance flight usually means a slow buzz flight within a few inches of one's face. If the intruder is deemed an existential threat, they will beeline for the hive and raise the alarm.

After summoning the posse, the guard will beeline back to the intruder and bury its stinger in the first patch of bare skin it can find. Once embedded, the bee will tear away from the stinger, which releases a scent that identifies the soft spot for the rest of the posse. Once it has stung, a bee dies shortly afterward; meanwhile, it crawls around the embedded stinger, buzzing its wings to attract additional attention to the vulnerable spot.

Once a worker bee senses it has reached the end of its life it will gorge itself on toxic waste from the hive and fly away to die.

There is no centralized planning in a beehive. In a healthy colony, tasks are somewhat ranked by maturity, but any individual will perform whatever task is the most pressing need for the colony.

Drone

Drones are the males and perform no other task besides mating with a queen. A queen leaves the hive to mate sometime during the first few weeks of its life. Groups of drones loiter around the preferred mating sites hoping a queen will show up. If none show, they'll mosey back to the hive and beg another meal from a busy worker bee. It's a life of ease until the days begin to cool, and the workers decide they don't need those freeloaders anymore and prevent them from reentering the hive.

Swarm

The swarm is a honeybee colony's way to colonize. Once a hive has a strong work force of field bees with an abundant supply of pollen and honey, swarm preparations begin. The worker bees build a few queen cells and then prevent the old queen from killing the new queens once they hatch. The old queen also gets put on a diet so she can fly. Once all is set, they wait for a nice sunny day. Around mid-day about sixty percent of the adult worker bees and the old queen will exit the hive and form a cluster a short distance away.

As soon as the swarm settles down, a few dozen scout bees will begin searching for a new home. If a scout finds a suitable cavity, she will perform a dance on the outside of the cluster to communicate the spot to the other bees. If she can't convince any of the other scouts to go with her to investigate her preferred spot, she'll relinquish the role of scout and fade back into the cluster. Once enough scouts have agreed to the same cavity, they rouse the cluster of bees and guide them to their new home.

Comb

Honeycomb is integral to the honeybee colony. It is built of wax secreted from special glands. A bee chews a wax flake until it is pliable then deposits it at the build site. Each cell is built as a cylinder around the construction worker. Once the cylinders are the desired depth they are heated until they collapse against each other creating the hexagon pattern of honeycomb.

Propolis

Propolis is a unique honeybee substance used to sterilize and seal the inside of a hive. It is made of various compounds collected from trees and plants. A healthy colony will put a thin layer of the stuff on the inside of its cavity and seal every crack with it. Anything noxious that the bees cannot remove from their hive will get encased in propolis. Some beekeepers have even found mummified mice in their hives encased in propolis.

Honey

Few people would care about honeybees if they wouldn't have the propensity to produce more honey than they can use. The nectar that bees bring back to the hive is about eighty percent water and twenty percent sugar; cured honey has the percentages reversed. During the collection and curing process, the nectar is handled by numerous individual bees. As each bee handles the drop of nectar, enzymes are added to it; thus. honey is not merely nectar evaporated to twenty percent water.

A single honeybee can produce about one-fifth teaspoon of honey in its lifetime. A well-managed colony in a good nectar flow area can produce two hundred pounds of honey per year!

The bees’ instinct is to swarm as soon as they have built a strong population and stored a good amount of honey and pollen. Swarming is a bane for honey production. To produce an abundance of honey a beekeeper must try to suppress the swarm instinct. It takes a certain amount of worker bees to keep the critical functions of a hive going, so the only way to store up honey is to increase the workforce. Typically, the larger the workforce, the higher the honey yield.

Potential Wisdom

How might a church look that is modeled after a superorganism like the honeybee colony?

Would a church fall apart without top-down planning?

How much strife would be present if all members would willingly work for the good of the group without being specifically called upon?

What if everyone could see a blessing in the diversity of gifts?

What if group-think would prevail over individual ideas?

What if everyone could agree on the fabric necessary to bind the group together?

A list of thoughts could be much longer. Solomon specifically called out sluggards to consider the example of ants. I believe there is much more we can learn from such communal insects besides being industrious.