About the Honey bee in Qur'an
Harun Yahya

"Such as remember Allah, standing, sitting, and reclining, and consider the creation of the heavens and the earth, (and say): Our Lord! Thou createst not this in vain. Glory be to Thee! Preserve us from the doom of Fire."  (Al Qur'an: Al-Imran,191)

"And thy Lord taught the Bee" "And thy Lord taught the Bee to build its cells in hills, on trees, and in (men's) habitations; Then to eat of all the produce (of the earth), and find with skill the spacious paths of its Lord: there issues from within their bodies a drink of varying colours, wherein is healing for men. Verily inthis is a Sign for those who give thought." (Nahl Sura, 68-69)

The above verse of the Qur'an, in the chapter named "An-Nahl" or "honeybee", notifies us that this tiny animal has got many creation mysteries within itself. Do you ever remember yourself thinking about the detailed story of the delicious food honey and its producer, honeybee?  In fact, bees store this wonderful food named honey as a preparation to the winter months when it is going to be hard for them to find flowers.

Normally, animals do not bother to store food exceeding the amount they can consume. However, bees produce honey, several times more than their need. This is just the same as the hen unnecessarily laying eggs daily or the cow producing milk more than its newborn would ever need… Absolutely, the first question that comes to mind is; why has this "excess production"  lasting for tens of thousands of years not terminated? The answer to this question lies in the above verse that explain how the bee is taught to produce honey.

Lives of bees in the hive and their honey production have very interesting details. Without going into too much detail, let us discover more about the primary properties of the bees' "social life".

Regulation of humidity:

Temperature in the hive has to be 32 degrees Celsius for 10 months of the year during the brooding period. Humidity, which principally causes honey to attain its protective quality, must be kept within a certain limit in the hive. If this limit is exceeded, then the honey gets spoiled upon loosing its protective and nutritious qualities. In order to constantly maintain the temperature and humidity in the hive within these exact limits, a special "ventilation group" is appointed just for this important task.

Air conditioning: Bees ventilate the hive to make it cool and produce honey containing the right humidity caliber. The same ventilation system is used to safeguard the hive from smoke and air pollution. During a hot day, it is easy to observe the bees ventilating the hive. The entrance of the hive is full of bees and by clamping on the wooden floor they fan the hive using their wings. In a standard hive, the entering air is forced to leave from the other side. The extra ventilators in the hive also labor for pushing the air to four different directions.

This time another question comes to mind, how do the bees "plan" and "carry out" the operations for the regulation of humidity and air conditioning? These operations need immense "intelligence" and "consciousness". We already know that it is not possible for these animals to possess these abilities. Then, the real source of this intelligence and consciousness must be found.

Health system:

The effort of the bees to preserve the quality of the honey is not only limited with humidity regulation and air conditioning. A wonderful health system functions in the hive to control all events that may result in the origination of bacteria. This system firstly aims at destroying all places that may possibly result in the production of bacteria. The basic principle of this health system is to prevent foreign objects entering the hive. Because of this, there are always two guardians at the hive's entrance. If a foreign substance or insect enters the hive despite this prevention, all bees get into action to keep it out from the hive.

For the bigger foreign objects that can not be carried outside, another prevention mechanism is started. Bees produce a substance called "propolis (bee resin)" for these kinds of situations.They formulate it by gathering resin from trees like pine, poplar and acacia; then combining this with some special secretions. The basic feature of propolis, is its capability of not sheltering any bacteria inside it. These sorts of substances are covered with 1.5 mm thick propolis, and isolated from the hive.  This same bee resin is used to patch the cracks of the hive. This resin reacts with the air and forms a hard surface after drying in a very short time.

It is clearly obvious to realize that the system bees implement when protecting the hive needs great consciousness and intelligence again. The most interesting part of it is that beyond all these, the secretion of bees used for protection purposes do not shelter any bacteria. Even though we assume that bees secrete this substance "consciously" to cover the foreign particles, how will we be able to explain that bees give an antibacterial quality to this secretion? Do you, who has a more developed intelligence than the bee, possess the ability to give antibacterial quality to any secretions of your own body?  Finally, it is barely clear that bee's body and its secretions are precisely "designed" and created.

Cleaning:

Bees never leave their feces inside the hive, they do this when flying or far away from the hive.

Cells:

Honeybees shape small beeswax and construct a hive for 30.000 bees to live and   work together.  The hive is made up of beeswax walled honeycombs with many tiny cells on their surfaces.  All the cells forming the honeycomb have exactly the same dimensions. This engineering miracle is multiplied by the collective functioning of thousands of bees. Bees use these cells for food storage and maintenance of the young bees.

Bees use the hexagonal structure in the formation of the honeycomb for millions of years. Why have they chosen the hexagonal formation rather than octagonal, spherical or pentagonal structures? Mathematicians have spent too much effort on finding the answer to this question. The calculations proved that; the hexagonal structure was the most suitable and convenient geometric form to gain maximum benefit from the unit area in the honeycomb. If the honeycomb cells were formed in another structure, then there would be spare places left out of use; thus less honey would be stored. Also the population of the bees using the hive would be less. Another advantage of the hexagonal cell is while containing the maximum amount of honey; it needs the minimum amount of wax for construction.

The honeycomb as an architectural miracle:

The construction of the honeycomb is started from the upper side of the hive and continued simultaneously in two or three separate rows downward. While a single honeycomb expands in two opposite directions, first the bottom part of its two rows join.

This job is realized in a startling cooperation and arrangement. So, it is never possible to tell that the honeycomb originally constituted from the process of three separate parts. The pieces of honeycomb produced in separate starting points are combined in such excellence that, although there are hundreds of different angles in its structure it seems like one uniform piece.

The cells combining these two rows also have a perfect hexagonal structure and same dimensions with others. Even one cell is not different from the others. Scientists are deeply surprised how thousands of bees are able to match this sort of a precise calculation.

Determination of direction:

Honeybees usually have to fly long distances and trace large  territories to find food. They gather flower dust and honey constituent within a range of 800 meters from their hive. The bee, which finds the flowers, flies back to the hive to inform others about their place. But, how will this bee describe the place of the flowers to its friends?

The bee returning to the hive starts to make a kind of a dance. This dance is a way of explaining the location of the flower source to the other bees. This dance, repeated many times by the bee; includes information about the direction, distance and other details to enable the other bees to reach the target. This dance of the bee is actually performed by drawing an 8 figure in the air. The bee forms the middle part of the eight by shaking its tail and making zig-zags. The angle between the zig-zags and the line between the sun-hive, gives the exact direction of the food source.

However, knowing only the direction of the food source is not enough. Worker bees should also possess information regarding the distance of the hive to the source before going there. So, the bee returning from the flower source shakes its body several times to tell the distance. For example; in order to express a distance of 250 m., it shakes the bottom part of its body 5 times in half a minute. This way, the exact place of the source is determined with both distance and angle.

If the journey from the hive to the source is taking a long time, then there arises a new problem for the bee. Sun moves 1 degree every four minutes. Eventually, while describing the location of the food source, the bee will possibly make an error of one degree for each four minutes he passes on his way back to the hive.  Yet, actually the bee does not have any problem at all! The bee's eye is formed of many small hexagonal lenses. Each lens focuses on a narrow area just like a telescope. When the bee flies towards the sun during the day, it can find its exact place all the time. Scientists say that the bee is doing this by making use of the change in the brightness of the sun according to the time of the day. As a result, the bee modifies the information about the direction of the food source according to the movement of the sun and tells the exact direction of the food source to the other bees without any fault.

Harun Yahya is a well known writer from Istanbul who has written numerous books and articles on Islam, which includes the marvels of Allah's creation, the evolution theory, and politics. His articles have been published, not only in Turkey, but in other countries as well. His study aims to convey the message of the Qur'an, and to encourage people to think on issues such as the existence and the unity of God, and the Hereafter.