Years ago on the sitcom Full House, D.J. and Stephanie belonged to the Honeybees, a club similar to Girl Scouts minus the vest with pins. Instead, they wore honeybee outfits. Those little kids were beeeeeautiful and were buuuuzzzzzzzzing around with all sorts of excitement, happy to beeeeeee a part of this group.
I hope you are ready for some more fun and interesting honeybee facts beeeeefore I make application to the Scriptures.
A bee’s life is given is service and sacrifice. To make a tablespoon of honey, 4,000 flowers will have to be visited by the workers. A worker bee is able to hold about 40 mg. of nectar. To achieve full capacity and depending on the flowers, they may have to visit 100-1,000 flowers over the course of 30 minutes to an hour. Each worker bee will make about 10 trips each day.
Other worker bees stay near or in the hive. Inside the hive, the temperature is controlled by the bees as they flap their wings. Worker busy are processing the nectar, caring for the queen, and a number of other tasks.
Outside the hive, scouts guard against intruders and threats. If an intruder appears, the scout goes in for the sting. The sting will actually fill the air with pheromones, a chemical language spoken by the bees, sending out a community-wide alert and a call for others to join the fight. Soon, there are hundreds of bees willing to attack and defend the hive.
When a bee stings, it typically results in the end of their life. The stinger has barbs which grab the skin of the victim.
For the bee to fly away, the stinger has to be torn from its body, ripping out a portion of the digestive tract, nerves, and abdominal muscles. Even so, the bee never hesitates to sting when the danger is present.
Can we see how this is a great description of what the Christian life should be? We are told in Romans 12:1, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” Paul follows up on this in Philippians 1:21, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”
We have much to learn from the bee’s devotion and commitment! Our life belongs to the Lord and should be available to Him for any kind of service and all that that service may require, even our lives.
But notice something else. Those scout bees guard the hive on the outside. They don’t wait for the intruder to get in. They keep the intruder on the outside.
Jude 1:4 says, “For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.” False prophets – pastors, teachers, evangelists, churches, and authors – are in abundance today. The place to stop them is before they ever get in the hive. You don’t let them in just to see what they would do.
Knowing that Satan wants to destroy all that belongs to the Lord, that makes our “hives” a target. We need to guard our personal lives and the church collectively with such fierce tenacity.
To give our lives in service and sacrifice is a noble way to live!
www.mdbka.com/bee-information/
www.schoolofbees.com/the-mythology-and-symbolism-of-bees-in-christianity-and-judaism/
www.animalwised.com/why-do-bees-sting-1372.html
