A Hive Like Clockwork

Since Allah has given it this place, what must be understood is why. When men look into the honeybee and study it, they are astounded, for they hardly find another creature like it. Other animals have their crude ways; the honeybee is among the most sophisticated of beings, and they have strategies, and a management, and an ordering very like that of human beings in many respects.

Consider it. Their responsibilities are divided. There is a queen bee, who is protected; there is the brood, the young, who are cared for; there are the worker bees and the guard bees — whether these are the right words for those who know about honey, perhaps they are not the right terms — and so all the offices are divided and ordered. Some go out to the various plants and take from them. And what is of great interest is that each of these hives will have some thirty thousand small cavities, thirty thousand or thereabouts, so finely made, in the shape of a hexagon, and so exactly proportioned that one would hardly find one larger or smaller than another; they are perfectly of a piece with one another. Even if one takes modern instruments and tries to measure them, one will find little difference between them.

They have, of course, the storage area, and the area from which they take and consume; they have the guards at the door, as has been said; they have the queen bee; and some tend the larvae, or whatever they have there, and others tend the young, and some are engaged in the engineering and are, as it were, the construction workers, who see that everything is kept in repair should anything go amiss. And there are those who go out; and when they go out and find a flower and take the nectar from it, they leave a sign upon it. How this is done is not yet certain, but they leave something there, so that another bee coming upon the same flower will not waste its time. That is why one hardly sees many bees at one place; one sees only one or two. They take, and then they go, and no other bee need go there; they go and find some new place. And the honey will of course differ according to what they take from. That is why the pomegranate honey was mentioned: there are many pomegranate trees there, and so when one eats that honey one tastes the pomegranate in it. And that is why there are the various kinds of honey, eucalyptus and the rest.

And if any of them brings back bad nectar, anything impure, the guards at the door will not let it in, and it is then punished. It is remarkable; the system is remarkable; it works like clockwork. They cannot bring any impure substance in to spoil the rest of the honey. So Allah (swt) states plainly here that We inspired them, that We guided them in that way. And even the word used is awḥā, which is generally used of inspiring the prophets with something. It is a complex, elaborate and sophisticated system, and that is why Allah (swt) says that there is enough in it for people to think upon.