Honeybee Engineering and You

If you study on it a spell, there are some amazing similarities between organizational structures and honeybee lifestyles. Scientists often discover new functions and processes in existing cells — oh, look, a new organelle! We have micro- and macroscopic bodily parts work together for the whole.

Analogies are usually imperfect, but compare the lifestyles of honeybees to more complex organisms. But first, consider a workplace. The supervisor assigns a task to an even if it is not their usual area, then normal duties resume. Bees take on new duties for a while, then often resume the old ones.

Honeybees swarm, Flickr / USFWS, Sarah Swenty (CC BY 2.0)

Individual honeybees can be interesting, but the way they work like an organism is fascinating. They were designed with knowledge of various functions. Bees use their wings for flying but also cooling the hive. They also know that the hexagon is the ideal shape for the honeycomb. God provides for us with honey via bees, and bees are designed to make enough to spare for us. They are vital for pollination. These and other aspects display complex engineering, and baryons-to-bees evolutionists cannot offer plausible explanations. The most rational explanation for all this is the work of the Creator.

A week ago, my wife came in and announced, “There’s a scary-looking bees’ nest in the lilac bush!” Wasps routinely try to build nests around our house, so I was prepared for the worst when I went out to investigate. What I found was a basketball-sized cluster of honey bees — a “swarm.” There was no nest, only a living ball of thousands of bees hanging from a branch. 

I’ve never done any beekeeping, but fortunately, we have some friends who do. We had no idea, but apparently a swarm of bees in May on an easily accessible branch is something to get excited about! Soon, our beekeeper friends rolled up in their pickup truck.

. . .

Here was a fascinating example of a finely tuned aspect of living organisms that was surely worth further investigation. A trip to the university library and online research quickly yielded multiple sources of information about honey bees from specialists of all types. As I’ve read up on bee behavior and their life cycles, a striking picture appears of ingenious design in living systems.

To see the entire article, fly over to "Natural Engineering in the Lifestyle of Honey Bees." You may also like "Bee Hive Business."