From Their Bellies a Drink

Allah (swt) says, at verse 68:

Wa awḥā rabbuka ilā al-naḥl, an ittakhidhī mina al-jibāli buyūtā: We inspired the honeybee to make its homes in the mountains, and in the trees, wa mina al-shajari wa mimmā yaʿrishūn. Thumma kulī min kulli al-thamarāt: then go and forage among all the different flowers, all the different flowers, to seek your nectar. Fa-slukī subula rabbiki dhululā: be humble in the path of your Lord. And then, yakhruju min buṭūnihā sharābun mukhtalifun alwānuhu fīhi shifāʾun li-l-nās: from their bellies comes a liquid of various colours, and in it is a cure for people; and in this is a sign for those who reflect.

And once a man begins to think about the honeybee, there is a great deal of study upon it, and the way honey is made is fascinating, absolutely fascinating. Consider only the various colours of honey. There is black honey, dark as treacle, and there is the purest white honey; the black was from Panama, though not that it is to be had there alone, and the white from Hawaii. There is Ukrainian honey in the house at present, and honey from New Zealand, and from Australia, and from several other places. ʿAjīb. Honey is a remarkable thing. Some pomegranate honey was lately sent from Bengal, though it seems to have spoilt.

The honeybee, then, is a remarkable creature. Why should a thing so small, which people treat as they do — and indeed in a hadith it is mentioned that the insān is like a honeybee, that a good insān is like the honeybee, because it consumes only what is good, and will never take what is wrong, and will never take what is impure; and what it produces, honey, is always a pure substance. And it is said that when it goes to the flower from which it is to take its pollen, to those very delicate stems one may see there, it hovers about the flower and does not alight upon it; it alights about it merely, hovers about it, takes its pollen, and goes away. The workings of the honeybee are remarkable, if one only follows them; they are remarkable. There is a museum in South London which shows a good deal of this close at hand, and it is of great interest.