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“And It All Just Happened”: The Story of the Honeybee
Once upon a time, gazillions of years ago, so we’re told, an infinitesimal speck decided it wanted to become a honeybee. It wanted to bless humankind some distant light years in the future with sweet honey, and help flowers beautify the landscape. Or so the evolutionists tell us.
What we have today is truly amazing and so complex that it is hard to imagine how it all came together. Let’s look at the construction of the honeybee just to see how it’s put together and how all the intricate parts of its anatomy cooperate. Time Magazine had an article on the honeybee a while back, and that is the source of much of the information in this article.
The eyes – Bees have five eyes. There are two large compound eyes and three ocelli which are used to detect light intensity. There are nearly 7,000 lenses in the bee worker’s eyes.
Electrostatic charge – How do bees attract pollen? There is an electric charge on the hair on the bee’s body that attracts the pollen.
The proboscis – The bee’s “nose” is an airtight tube like a straw. It sucks up the nectar, and also has a reverse mechanism that allows the bee to feed baby bees from a stomach that is full of nectar.
Mandible – The bee’s jaws help to bite and pack the pollen, and also shape wax that is used in building the honeycomb.
Wings – Each bee has two sets of wings. By rapidly flapping the wings, warmth is generated, which then evaporates the water from the nectar in order to make honey.
Wing hooks – There are hooks on the bee that allow it to attach one of each set of wings together when in flight to allow greater efficiency.
Legs – The bee’s legs have brushes that scrape pollen from front to back, where the pollen is collected in a pollen basket. That basket is a sac attached to each rear leg.
Wax plates – These little creatures secrete wax beneath plates on their abdomen, which wax is then used to build honeycombs.
Honey stomach – The bee has a second reservoir where nectar is stored temporarily until it is needed, at which time it is regurgitated.
Production – The expression “busy as a bee” is an apt description. A hive of workers together fly about 55,000 miles to produce one pound of honey.
The hive – Typically consists of 20,000 to 30,000 bees, and in winter they create an ecosystem inside the hive while living off the honey. They stay warm by working their wings. Middle-aged workers build in the hive by attaching each comb to the walls of the hive. This process may require more than two pounds of wax.
The hive’s inhabitants – Workers do the construction, store the honey, keep the nursery, do guarding and caretaking, as well as scouting and foraging for flowers. Drones mate with the virgin queen in midair. They are adept at flying, so can fly backwards, and can rotate and flip. The Queen lays up to 1,500 eggs a day. She secretes pheromones in order to control the workers.
The dance – No, they don’t have a ballroom dance party, but when a scout locates food, he alerts the others about the location with a series of dance moves. By the number of turns, the length of the dance and various moves, the scout indicates the distance to the food, and the angle of the food to the sun. A figure-eight dance routine tells the others to fly towards the sun. The number of these patterns in the procedure indicates the distance to the food. The angle of the dance indicates the angle of the food source relative to the hive and the sun. If the food is nearby, the bee does a round dance.
It’s all so amazing that someone might exclaim, “It’s a miracle that it all came together.” Oh, wait a minute. It IS a miracle! An ancient document written thousands of years ago said, “In the beginning, God created…” (Genesis 1:1).
Truthfully, how can anyone suppose that this took place over millions of years by accidents of nature? Consider the proboscis, the bee’s nose. I have been told that in addition to sucking up nectar and then reversing the process to feed the babies, the bee also breathes through the proboscis. Remember, the evolutionist theory is that it may take millions of years for the bee to adapt as it improves. So…it sucks up the nectar, but it has not developed the mechanism to clear the passages so it can feed the babies, as well as breathe. So the bee has to figure out a way to do this, but that may take eons of time. And in the process, guess what happens. ALL THE BEES DIE! Why? Because they cannot feed the babies, and they cannot breathe.
So, which is more rational? To believe that the bee is an accident of nature that took eons of time to evolve, or that a master planner designed and created the bee? I believe the answer is evident.
