Bees on God's Business

My grandfather used to keep bees. He had several boxes that the bees lived in on his small farm in rural Ohio.

He told me that the hives tend to downsize a bit in the fall, and generally have more food in the form of honey than they need to get through the cold months of winter, which is where all of the honey sold in the store comes from. Granddad didn’t sell honey, but put it in quart jars and kept it for himself, sharing with family and others when the need arose.

One day about 60 years ago, when I was seven or eight, I was visiting to spend a weekend with my grandparents. I ran out to the barn to say hello and found him where he had almost finished harvesting honey from his beehives. That is when I got my first view of the inside workings of life in a beehive.

I was always told before not to go near or mess with his bees in any way, as I could get stung: not just once but multiple times, but more importantly, the bees doing the stinging would die and the hive would be down several workers important for the health and survival of the hive.

I had been stung before and that’s a lesson not soon forgotten.

I was surprised to see him working around the bees without any safety clothing. There were bees flying about, landing on his bare skin. Not once did he get stung.

He would pull a thick heavy honeycomb full of honey, tap it gently on the top of the opened hive to displace the bees clinging to it, then use a soft brush to move all the bees left clinging to the frame. A large knife scraped the surface to open the honey cells, and then he placed it into a stainless steel contraption  that spun the honeycomb around with the honey being flung to the sides and draining into a bucket below. He placed all the empty honeycomb frames back into the hive and put the lid back on before returning the hives to their place behind the barn.

While he was gone for a few minutes, I was going to stick my finger in the bucket for a taste, because I really, really liked honey.

Looking into the bucket of collected honey, I noted several bees stuck, and struggling. I kept my fingers out, abandoning the thought of that honey sampling. Granddad caught me staring into the bucket when he returned.

I asked my granddad if that would be a problem and if they would ruin the taste of honey.

He said that they will eventually die from exhaustion or dehydration or even just suffocate due to being unable to move and covered with thick honey. He told me it was just the cost of the harvest.

Of course, I wasn’t comfortable with this answer and asked if he could just spare them their misery.

I remember a look on his face that told me I was being foolish. However, without saying a word, he took his well used jack knife out if his overalls, and after opening the blade, carefully removed each of the bees and placed them onto a jar lid. He handed them to me as if I was now responsible for their welfare.

I shuffled out into the sunlight with my bees while my granddad began putting that hard won, precious honey into jars to be stored in the root cellar.

Not wanting to hurt these little struggling insects, which even in their sorry state, I was still afraid of them. I put them down on a garden bench to watch. A few minutes later, a single bee flew in for a visit as if to say goodbye to a friend before flying off again. As I continued to peer at them, several more bees hovered in and landed. Soon, I couldn’t see the original bees, there were too many tending to the unfortunate sticky and tired worker bees.

As it turns out, bees are very good at licking up spilled honey. Soon, heavily laden bees began lifting off, only to be replaced by fresh workers. The bees began thinning out, revealing two of the last three bees exercising their wings where before they were glued down. The last bee was still being cared for when those others had fully recovered and flown off. That final bee became free and seemed to be encouraged by those few workers still cleaning up the remnants of honey. Soon, the jar lid was empty, and no trace of the bees troubles remained.

What’s important about this story?

Their family didn’t give up on them. One individual bee is important to them all. One bee took a message to the hive, reported the trouble, and returned to give aid and save those little bees.

Just like you! You are important to your family. Your family will always love and support you, rescue you from troubles, support you when you need it most.

Just like Jesus loves you, He is always with you. He is always willing to help. You just need to ask.