Consider the Honey Bee

This Sunday, as I sat dining with my friend on his back porch, a lone, lost bee found its way into my glass of icy fructose-sweetened cola, perhaps mistaking its syrupy-sweet scent for that of the nectar which usually provides its nourishment. My friend was horrified when the bee fell from the inner-wall of the cup and landed in the pool of frigid, black liquid below.

 For a moment, we watched mercilessly as the tiny insect struggled against the trap we had unwittingly placed for it, thrashing in the sticky pool and attempting to get its wings above the surface. Then, when the bee had apparently accepted his demise and curled up, perhaps to retain what little body heat remained in her body, my friend poured the glass over, releasing the bee from its watery tomb.

For a moment, my friend obsessed over the bee’s lack of movement and outwardly lamented his involvement in the destruction of this, the most prized of nature’s creations.  I too felt some remorse for my lack of action when I could have saved the bee’s life. I regretted that I’d failed to show the bee population the same benevolence that they’ve shown me. In this way, along with several others, humans have 

characteristically failed to fit in with the synergy that allows all of nature’s creatures to co-exist.

We were provided with some relief when the bee, being warmed by the sun, began to squirm and stretch, awakening from her hypothermic slumber and loping away as though intoxicated by the sugar slurry she had just been submerged in.

Most people seem content to imagine that food simply materializes on the grocery store shelf, and the key actors in producing the food often go unnoticed and unappreciated. Undoubtedly, my favorite player on this hidden stage is the bee.

The common honey bee is vital to the global agriculture industry.  Each year, thousands of domestic bee colonies are shipped around the world to assist in the pollination of our most beloved fruits and vegetables. 

For this task, bees were selected due to their unwavering work ethic and their surprisingly systematic and efficient method of reproduction.

How strange that in its endeavors to propagate its own species, the bee lends a hand to every other organism that surrounds it. How odd that the bee carries on without any apparent purpose, save her unwitting function as nature’s catalyst.

Saint John Chrysostom once wrote, “The bee is honored more than any other animals, not because she labors, but because she labors for others.” Whether it is by conscious acts or pure instinct, the common domestic bee possesses a strong moral fortitude, unsurpassed by any animal I know of. Throughout the entirety of their short lives, they have but one goal in mind: to ensure the prosperity of the hive’s future generations. The colony sacrifices all of their energies in their effort to provide for their queen, who, as the sole matriarch of the hive and the only hope that the colony has of raising new brood, is more a symbol of the hive’s future than an authoritative figure.

Above all else, the bee is devoted to the future. The bee doesn’t flounder about in a vain search for purpose, substituting it with carnal pleasures along the way.  Once the new brood is ready to hatch, and the next generation has reached fruition, the residing queen leads a swarm of several thousand worker bees away from their old hive in order to make room for the next queen, as well as her newest subjects.

The swarm will attempt to construct a new hive, over which the old queen will preside. But in the meantime they will be extremely vulnerable; if the queen dies before she can produce eggs, the new colony is doomed. But the swarm seems to know that to stay in the old hive would lead to overcrowding and a competition for space, so they willingly forsake the security of their home to allow the next generation to flourish.

The bee not only labors for the benefit of the rest of its species, but also for the benefit of the entire ecosystem. In their frantic rush to collect flower pollen, which they’ll convert to the colony’s food stocks, forager bees become dusted in pollen and proceed to fertilize the stigma of the subsequent flowers that they visit. The bee’s marvelous work ethic makes it an extremely effective pollinator; unlike most insects, which travel from flower to flower only to sate their own hunger, the forager bee seeks to convert enough pollen into honey to feed countless future generations, and thus, she spends her entire existence transporting pollen from here to there.

Unbeknownst to the bee, her pursuit of nourishment is inextricably connected our own. The flowers that she pollinates as she buzzes around from plant to plant will grow into fruits and vegetables—nature’s primary vessels for the dispersal of the sun’s energy.  A farmer needs only to place a few handmade, portable colonies amongst his crops, and they’ll easily see a 100 to 200 percent increase in the size of their harvest. With that said, it is easy to imagine why just about every commercial farm in the U.S. will pay big bucks to exploit the bee’s natural mode of operation.

Although we may like to think otherwise, the bee doesn’t recognize the farmer or apiarist as her master, her employer, or even her friend. While the bee may be subject to the apiarist’s interventions, she is a faithful servant only to her queen. She is a servant only to the future of the colony. It’s only by some extraordinary alignment of fates that the bee feeds us as it feeds itself.

What force forged the links in this great chain which defines my existence? Was it the same that convinced the bee that the sustainment of life is worthy of self-sacrifice?

If we, as co-inhabitants of the Earth, are subject to the same unseen powers as the bee, is it not possible that we were also destined for the same purpose: to simply sustain the existence of our species in the world and in doing so to make our own unique contribution to nature? If so, that purpose has been long forsaken in our pursuit of material excess. Our reliance on the exploitation of the bee, as brought on by the introduction of monoculture farming (a technique made necessary by human overpopulation), is evidence enough that, as a collective body, humanity is somehow incapable of existing peacefully in nature.  Instead, we cart the bee around the all over the country; we force her to do our bidding, and then, adding injury to insult, we raid her hive for the sweet golden syrup which she has spent her entire miniscule existence producing and we sell it for a profile, filling our stomachs and our wallets with the bee’s hard work and determination.

Over the last decade, we’ve seen the bee population suffer greatly from our careless alteration of their environment. Colony Collapse Disorder (or CCD) is a new and enigmatic epidemic which has been ravaging America’s domestic bees, leaving apiarists with hundreds of empty hives, and no trace of the dead bees. Years of testing have ruled out natural factors as the cause of CCD; it seems that the disease is rooted in some human interaction with the insects, though the exact cause is yet unknown. The American Beekeeping Federation has begun to focus on determining the effects of extended release pesticides on U.S. crops. It’s theorized that as the plants absorb the pesticides, they pass toxins on to the bees through their pollen, thus tainting the supply of honey that feeds the entire colony. Research is still being conducted to determine which of our alterations to the life of the bee is killing it.

Perhaps man’s restlessness and dissatisfaction is a product of his tendency to view all other existence, human or otherwise, as inferior to his own; his fatal hubris, which forbids him from taking part in the great chain of give-and-take. We take-and-take everything the Earth can provide and use it to prolong our individual searches for “life’s great meaning.” The epidemic among the bee population is an example of nature’s limited elasticity. There are some patches of Earth that can’t be stretched to meet our specifications, and when we strain them too far, they will inevitably collapse.

I think that, more often than not, man thinks of creation as a human action rather than a natural process. We would do well, however, to remember our dependence on the bee and to be careful not to tread on our own roots as we create. As individuals, we must consider our ecosystem as something that we take part in and contribute to rather than something we manipulate and observe.