Honey, a Truly Miraculous Natural Product Honey bees, which are central to our lives, face possible extinction BY MOHAMMAD ABDULLAH
T
he greatest gifts sometimes arrive in odd wrapping. I am thinking of honey, that nutritious, healthy and natural food produced by honeybees. In fact, these tiny animals are critical to the continued functioning of our ecosystem, because they are the ones that pollinate so many of the plants that both animals and we eat. Researchers have also discovered other fascinating facts about them, such as their practice of physical distancing. One thing that we seldom think about, however, is how hard they work to extract nectar from flowers and transform it into honey. Surat an-Nahl (The Chapter of the Bees), reveals that God inspired the bee, saying, “Build yourselves houses in the mountains and trees and what people construct. Then feed on all kinds of fruit and follow the ways made easy for you by your Lord. From their bellies comes a drink of different colors in which there is healing for people. There truly is a sign in this for those who think” (16:68-69).
Bees have lived in these places for millions of years. The numerous types of boxes used by beekeepers today are relatively recent inventions. The scientific study of bee colonies, which began in 18th-century Europe, gradually uncovered their amazingly complex yet purposeful and dedicated life. Dr. Ahmed Zaki Abu Shadi, a U.K.based Egyptian Romantic poet, publisher, physician, bacteriologist and bee scientist, is credited for patenting a removable honeycomb in 1919, the same year that he founded the Apis Club, an international organization of individual beekeepers and bee scientists (https://shodhganga.inflibnet. ac.in/jspui/bitstream/10603/206049/11/9. chapter%203.pdf). Honeybees build their single-entrance hives by preparing its walls with a thin layer of propolis (“bee glue”). This antimicrobial substance is derived from the plant resins that worker bees collect, along with the nectar and pollen they need for food. Upon their return to the hive, other bees pull the sticky substance off their legs.
The plant resin is then mixed with saliva and wax, which they secrete by chewing it until it is soft, and then bond bits of it together to form individual hexagonal cells — the honeycomb. These cells are later used to store nectar, pollen, honey, eggs and larvae. Honey is stored in the uppermost cells, pollen in the rows below that and below those rows we find the workers’ brood cells. The queen’s cells are at the bottom. As the hive grows, the bees’ activities increase. An average honey bee hive comprises one fertile queen, whose main activity is egg-laying; between 20,000 to 80,000 sterile female worker bees, which do almost everything that needs to be done; and between 300 to 800 fertile males, called drones. In addition, there are about 5,000 eggs and the brood, about 25,000 to 30,000 immature bees in various stages of development. Of these, some 10,000 newly hatched are the larvae, while the remainder are pupae sealed into their cells by the workers to mature. All the larvae are fed during their first three days of life with “royal jelly.” After that, worker and drone larvae are fed a mixed food composed of honey and pollen, while the larvae destined to develop into queens are fed royal jelly during their whole fiveday larval life. A honeybee’s brain is about the size of a sesame seed, and yet it has a remarkable capacity to learn and remember. They may travel up to 3 miles in search of nectar and return to the same hive. They communicate through a “waggle dance,” which provides directions to other bees about a nectar/ pollen source (http://www.fao.org/3/t0104e/ t0104e05.htm). Honey originates from the thousands of flowers and trees that honeybees visit during the spring, summer and fall. They suck, collect and store the flowers’ nectar in their special stomach, where enzymes help convert it to honey. Once the honey sac is full, they return to the hive and regurgitate it into the honeycomb’s cells. Non-foraging bees then transform the nectar into honey by manipulating it many times with their mouthparts, reallocation and evaporation. After using their wings to evaporate the liquid from the nectar, the bees seal off the mature honey-containing cells with a lid of wax. As one honeybee produces about onetwelfth of a teaspoon of honey during her lifetime, a 16-ounce jar of honey represents the efforts of tens of thousands of bees flying
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020 ISLAMIC HORIZONS 53
