Did God Use Evolution To Create Life?
Part 3

The Honeybee and Pollination

One of the absolute proofs of God, and a major disproof of evolution, is symbiosis. There are hundreds of examples of symbiosis, or the ability of two completely different forms of life to aid each other, and which cannot survive apart from each other. Mankind, and the vegetables, fruits, nuts, meats, and fish he must eat, as well as the bacteria that live with him, is an example of incredible symbiosis.

Look up an article on the honeybee sometime in an encyclopedia, or obtain a book about bees from your local library or bookstore. It is a fascinating, mind-boggling study into one of the most orderly, regimented, systematic, successful societies in the entire ecosystem.

Every grade school child learns about bees and pollination in biology class. Every person grows up having observed bees flying from flower to flower, swarming over peach trees in bloom, carrying yellow dabs of pollen on each hairy leg.

The flowering plants could not exist without them. The bees could not exist without the plants. Which came first, the bees or the plants? This is not a simple question, or a nettlesome, impudent question for evolutionists, to be brushed aside like the proverbial “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” question of the days of the Scope’s trial. It is a profound difficulty for evolution, for, unless bees and flowering plants co-existed from the first, neither could survive!

The average bee hive contains about 50,000 to 80,000 bees, of which most are workers. The workers are a specific size, and are female, but cannot reproduce. Bees play such an important part in human life, and their efforts help man produce so many products that there are many idiomatic expressions in our language about bees.

“She is the queen bee” is a despective term for an arrogant woman. “He made a beeline for home” means he hurried home in a straight line, because bees, while they will wander in all directions in search of pollen and nectar, always make a straight flight back to their hive. “Honey” is probably the most common term of endearment used by spouses, and by parents for children. God described the Promised Land to Israel as a land “flowing with milk and honey.”

Consider the life of a bee, and ask yourself some vitally important questions about how evolution could be possible!

A bee egg is the size of the period at the end of this sentence. It is laid by the queen, who is solely responsible for reproducing the hive. None of the female workers are fertile; none lay eggs. But the egg is not laid on the ground, on a branch, or on a leaf. It is carefully deposited in the center of a perfectly formed sextagonal cell, made of beeswax.

The wax is produced by young workers. How? By special glands in their abdomens! How did such evolve? Which came first, the egg or the larva, or the grub or the adult? Why are there drones, workers, and one queen? No queen could exist without workers to collect the nectar. No worker could exist without the queen to lay eggs. No eggs could ever be produced without the drone to mate with the queen.

Did a tiny egg “evolve” by itself? Did a queen bee “evolve” in Africa, and a drone “evolve” in Massachusetts? If so, how did they ever find one another?

Was the first step in the “evolution” of a bee the worker? But if so, since they are infertile females, and cannot reproduce, how did they reproduce? These are not idle questions, merely intended to anger evolutionists. These are valid questions, which can be asked of any form of life in creation!

What is beeswax, and how is it formed?

The wax is secreted from pores outside the bee’s body, forming tiny flakes. The worker moves the flakes from its body to its jaws, and chews the substance until it is formed into beeswax. It then carefully builds a perfect, sextagonal cell. Each cell is only about 1/80th of an inch thick, and is joined to other cells, each exactly the same size. Who has not seen a honeycomb, and marveled at the intricate construction of it?

Each tiny cell is so constructed that it has a slight downward tilt toward the central retaining wall so the honey will not ooze out. Scientists have studied the honeybee for many centuries, and still do not know much of what there is to know about these marvelous little creatures.

How did they know to produce wax? How did they know to develop the glands that secrete it? How did they know to scrape it from their sides, chew it into strips, clip it with their jaws, and lay it carefully into such an intricate shape?

“As we may easily discover by measurement, the hexagon has the smallest circumference and therefore requires the least amount of building material. Moreover, hexagons are much better fitted to receive the roundish larvae which are reared in these little chambers than cells with triangular or square cross-sections could ever be. The bees, with their hexagonal cells, have in fact discovered [sic] the best and most economical plan conceivable. How they arrive at this, none of our learned men has so far been able to discover. Their writings and discussions on the subject are many, but they have not yet solved the riddle” (The Dancing Bees, Karl von Frisch, p. 8).

Beeswax is remarkably heat resistant! It will not melt down until subjected to 140 degrees Fahrenheit, the highest melting point of any known kind of wax!

One may purchase a jar of honey which contains a slab of honeycomb. When you study a honeycomb, you are not looking at the end result of blind chance—randomness through millions of years called evolution. No, you are looking at intricate design, and the awesome creative mind of God Almighty!

Once the egg is laid by the queen in the cell, it takes only about three days for a tiny larva, like a little worm, to crawl out of the egg. Which came first, the wax, the cell, the queen, the egg, or the larva? How did the queen become fertile? Where did the drones come from? How and why are the majority of the more than 50,000 bees in an average colony workers, who spend their lives gathering pollen, secreting wax, producing honey and royal jelly, and making perfectly shaped wax cells?

How does the larva survive? One thing is sure, if a tiny larva “evolved” from some other form of life, it didn’t survive without being deposited in a waxen cell, and being fed by worker bees!

Go to your local health food store, and ask for a jar of royal jelly, if you wish to sample larva food! Royal jelly is a special kind of honey that is extremely rich in vitamins and proteins. It is secreted from glands in the heads of the young workers. In only days, as the tiny larva grows into a grub shape, or pupa, the workers begin feeding the grub a mixture of pollen and honey that scientists call “beebread.” Five days after the larva hatches from the egg, the workers seal the pupa by depositing a thin layer of wax over the cell. In twenty-one days, the grub-like pupa has miraculously become transformed into an adult bee. The bee then bites its way out of the cell, and immediately begins to work!

How does it know what to do? Miraculously, it knows to begin gathering nectar and pollen. It knows to join other workers in vigorously fanning its wings to cool the hive in hot weather. It knows, instinctively, that it should pay attention when a fellow worker comes back to the hive and begins to dance.

Dance? Yes, dance! Many years ago, as a project for science classes, our instructors obtained a swarm of bees in a beehive and placed it in a window, so it could be observed from inside the classroom.

The teachers demonstrated to the students how bees landed on the hive, then danced by facing in a certain direction and “buzzing,” or fanning their wings in various bursts of energy.

Facing first this way and then that, they would fan their wings vigorously for a certain span of time. They were teaching their fellow workers how far to fly in which direction relative to the sun! The workers then flew away from the hive, directly to the nectar that their scout had found.

Now, let your imagination run wild—just like evolutionists do. Imagine the very first time a worker bee wandered about, looking for nectar.

But she had not yet “evolved” the ability to return to the hive! She buzzed about, finding flowering fruit trees (which did not exist, since bees had not yet evolved as a colony yet, and there were no swarms of bees to pollinate the trees and flowers), and drank the nectar.

But, since she had not yet “evolved” the hairs on her legs, the grains of pollen did not collect on her, but kept falling off. Therefore, she couldn’t pollinate the trees and plants, for she could not carry the pollen from place to place. All the flowering plants died. So did the worker bee. After all, how could she survive, since she was never an egg, or a larva, or a pupa? And how could she survive if she did not know she was supposed to produce honey to eat? And how could she survive if she could not find the way back to her non-existent hive?

But, overcoming all these impossibilities, she decided to return to the hive. But she had not yet evolved the ability to make a hive, for her body had not yet “felt the need” to secrete wax from non-existent pores, and she had no idea she had to chew the wax, and then carefully form it into perfectly shaped sextagonal cells, all joined together. After all, there was no hive to which she could return!

Besides, she had not yet “evolved” solar navigation. She had not yet evolved a keen memory, detailing every meter of distance between each flower, and memorizing its relationship to the sun and the hive.

So, our very first honeybee could not fly on a direct “beeline” to her hive, for she didn’t know how. Furthermore, if she could find her non-existent hive, there would be no queen awaiting her (and what difference would it make, since workers are infertile females, anyway?), no larvae to feed, and no additional wax cells to make to house eggs, since there were no drones to mate with the queen, and therefore no eggs!

Therefore, our very first honeybee, without a hive, without solar navigation, without wax-making ability, without pollen-gathering ability, simply ran out of nectar, fell to the ground, and died of exhaustion. Just before she died, she was heard by an evolving beetle to say, “To bee, or not to bee—that is the question!”

You see, the hive is a perfect community of symbiotic relationship—each drone, worker, and queen working together in intricate ways for the good of all. None can survive alone. In a perfect cycle of life, all must survive together, doing exactly what they do.

Scientists do not know how the workers “decide” it is time to produce more queens! Perhaps the queen grows old, or decides to fly away with a swarm of drones to form another hive.

For some mysterious reason, the workers begin to feed only royal jelly to several larvae, but not before building special cells for these special larvae to grow in. These cells are not among the myriad other six-walled cells, but resemble a half a peanut, hanging from the hive.

The ruling queen lays eggs in these larger, different cells. The eggs hatch into tiny larvae. The workers then feed them some “special substance” (science does not know how they decide to do this, what this substance is, or how they produce it) in the royal jelly which determines they will become queens.

The young adult queen has changed from larva to pupa, to a winged, hairy-bodied adult in only sixteen days after the egg was hatched.

But, alas! If two queens hatch at the same time, they fight to the death! One finally succeeds in stinging the other one to death. If there are more than two, the same scenario takes place. All are eliminated except one! Then, gaining strength from eating honey, the surviving queen takes her first flight.

How does she know how to fly? She has no memory of flight. She has no “knowledge” of what those wings are that gradually dried out, and are now lying alongside her back. But, suddenly, she flies. Eager drones immediately follow her. Higher and higher she flies as the drones swarm about her, jousting with each other for her favors. She may mate with one, or several, during this mating flight.

She then returns to the hive, where workers have been rapidly creating dozens of new, perfectly shaped, sextagonal cells of wax they have chewed from the flakes on the bodies. The queen now has two functions in life: laying eggs and eating. She may lay as many as 2,000 eggs in one day! She continues doing this for up to five years, having laid up to one million eggs in her lifetime!

How did the workers first “decide” to select particular eggs to become queens? How did they “evolve” the “special substance” they feed a tiny, struggling, worm-like larva? What causes the queens to fight until only one remains? What if, back in the dim reaches of ancient time, the very first two queens to ever hatch stung each other to death simultaneously? That would mean the very first hive died, so no honeybees exist!

No, the entire colony had to exist just as it does today from the very first time there ever was a beehive, with workers, drones, and a queen—all fulfilling their perfectly-designed roles.

Honey—Food for Bees and Man

Most school children know all about honey. At least, they know its taste. There are many kinds of honey; many colors, depending on the kind of flowering plants from which the bees collect nectar. Many thousands of families keep their own bees and collect their own honey. For many children, a favorite sandwich is peanut butter and honey. Many major food manufacturers bottle and sell honey. They do not “make” honey—it is made by the bees. All they do is filter out most of the impurities and place the honey in a container, and sell it.

How do the bees make it?

When a bee drinks in nectar from a flower, it is at once collecting and redistributing grains of pollen so that the plant is pollinated. The nectar is taken in through the bee’s mouth, into its “honey stomach.” Once the honey stomach is filled with nectar, the worker knows it is time to return to the hive.

Though she followed the “dance” of the scout she watched turning this way and that, buzzing its wings in bursts of energy to indicate how far and in what direction she should go to find the blossoms, the worker has programmed into her tiny brain the exact location of the hive relative to the sun.

With her honey stomach full (as opposed to her own stomach which digests her food), she turns directly toward the hive. She “knows” that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. She makes a “beeline” home.

While the nectar is in the bee’s honey stomach, her stomach is secreting “certain chemicals” (science does not know how this is done) into the nectar. Once the bee is back in the hive, she either gives the nectar to another hungry bee by drawing it back out of the stomach through her mouth, or, most of the time, deposits it in one of the wax cells. Once a cell is full of nectar, the bees carefully seal it with wax.

The stored nectar is changed into honey by the chemicals from the bee’s honey stomach. Any water in the nectar evaporates, for the razor thin walls of the wax cells are porous and the nectar is changed into honey.

Each tiny drop of nectar is incredibly small. The bee’s little honey stomach, when it is empty, is about the size of a pinhead. It would require about sixty full honey stomachs to fill a thimble with nectar. Amazingly, each bee must visit and drink nectar from over one thousand single florets, such as those in crimson clover, just to fill its honey stomach once!

Bees do not encounter pollen by accident. They need pollen in order to survive. The workers who feed the queen larvae do so from predigesting pollen into royal jelly. As the bees collect pollen, they mold it into a solid mass on their hind legs. One may observe a honeybee busily going from flower to flower with little yellow pods on the outside of its hind legs. This is pollen the bee has gathered. As she gathers it, her body becomes completely dusted with grains of pollen, which are then transferred to the waiting stigmata of other flowers. The stigma is the part of the pistil of a flower which receives pollen grains.

Since the average honeybee hive needs somewhere between sixty and one hundred pounds of pollen each year for food, they must collect almost four million loads of pollen!

Again, remember that pollen, predigested by the workers, who secrete some kind of chemical from glands in their heads, determines whether the egg will become another worker or a queen!

How is this done? Scientists have no idea. How can a tiny brain of an insect contain such remarkable intelligence, such mind-boggling instinct?

A beehive is like one living organism living in perfect symbiotic relationship with flowers, flowering trees and plants, clover, and other flowering grasses. Neither can survive without the other!

Yet, the beehive is, in itself, an incredibly complex symbiotic organism, with a queen, drones, workers, eggs, larvae, and pupae all present in their various perfectly developed stages.

Which came first? For either to “evolve” separately is utterly impossible. For either to survive separately is impossible.

Anyone who believes in evolution believes in pure myth—the fanciful, imaginary guesswork of those who reject the Eternal Creator God. “Theistic” evolution is merely an attempt to accept evolution as the “method” a “God” of some kind used to create all the myriad forms of life on earth. As a theory, it is equally untenable with Darwinian evolution.

The next time you taste honey, take a moment to reflect on the wonders of God’s creation, on how the little honeybee serves mankind, and on how life could not exist without the bees.

The word honey is mentioned almost fifty times in the Bible. Its first mention is found in Genesis 43, in the moving account of elderly Jacob, sending his sons again into Egypt, to determine if Joseph is alive:

“And their father Israel [Jacob] said unto them, If it must be so now, do this; take of the best fruits in the land in your vessels, and carry down this man a present, a little balm, and a little honey, spices, and myrrh, nuts, and almonds: Take double money in your hand; and the money that was brought again in the mouth of your sacks, carry it again in your hand...” (Genesis 43:11,12).

Honey has been known from ancient times. Honeybees have been found preserved in amber, which scientists know to be thousands of years old. They are exactly like the honeybees of today. They are not part bees, and part something else, but perfectly formed bees.

Fourteen times, the Promised Land is described as a “land that floweth with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:8,17; 13:5, etc.), and is a special feature of the account of Samson, the slain lion, and the riddle (Judges 14).

Samson had slain a lion, and, when he returned, the drying bones of the carcass contained a swarm of bees that had built a hive, and were manufacturing honey.

Samson:

“turned aside to see the carcass of the lion: and, behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcass of the lion. And he took thereof in his hand and went on eating, and came to his father and mother, and he gave them, and they did not eat: but he told not them that he had taken the honey out of the carcass of the lion” (Judges 14:8,9).

Beekeepers know that bees will not sting unless they are pressed, or hurt. A sudden movement will cause them to sting, whereas a slow, gentle movement will not. Many beekeepers do not wear gloves. No doubt, Samson knew how to gently pick up a piece of honeycomb without being stung.

Jesus ate honey.

After Jesus Christ was resurrected, He appeared a number of times to His disciples. On one occasion, He appeared to them in Jerusalem:

“And He said unto them, Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts [doubts] arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see: for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have. And when He had thus spoken, He shewed them His hands and feet. [The livid scars were plainly visible; evidence of his torture and death on the stake.] And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, He said unto them, Have ye here any meat? And they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish and of an honeycomb. And He took it, and did eat before them” (Luke 24:37-43).

Here was the very Creator of all life, proving that He was alive—that He had been resurrected from the dead—by the familiar, everyday act of eating with them!

In this case, eating honey directly from a honeycomb. Considering He was the resurrected Savior of the world, and was also the Creator of honeybees, do you think this act of eating fish and honey was not an inspiring, moving act? Any evolutionist who had been present (there were no evolutionists then, so far as we know) would no doubt have dropped to his knees and said, with Thomas, “My Lord, and my God!”

What Honeybees Do For Us

The beekeeping and honey-selling industry is very large in the United States, Canada, and Australia, as well as in many other countries.

More than five and a half million hives are tended by beekeepers, and close to a half-million pounds of honey are sold each year.

Beeswax is used in making candles, chewing gum, cement, adhesives, liniments, cosmetics, polishes, transparent paper, electrical insulators, and lubricants, among other things. In a very real sense, bees and man live in symbiotic relationship. Bees pollinate the flowering plants and fruit trees, and produce wax and honey, all of which is vital for man’s life on this earth—his comforts, pleasures, and his survival.

Today, however, this priceless little part of God’s creation is threatened! Recent articles have revealed that a tiny mite is attacking many hives in the United States, and destroying the bees. To large orchard growers, and farmers growing food crops, beekeepers and their hives are very much in demand.

It would be a true catastrophe if the bees were to disappear. Is the threat to the honeybee another of the curses God said He would bring upon His people who forget Him and His laws?

Every detail of the life of a honeybee is worth study, for it is absolutely awesome. Just how awesome is illustrated by this admission from science:

“Men have studied the honeybee for hundreds of years. But we still do not know how the worker bees know what to do or when to do it. We do not know how the workers decide when to build more honeycomb, how they know when the developing bees need more food, or how they decide to start queen cells in which to raise new queen bees” (The World Book Encyclopedia, vol. II, pp. 154,155).

It would require enough pages to fill a book to discuss all the phenomenal facts available about bees. Such books have been written by scientists, and are available through book stores and in public libraries. Look up “apiary,” or “apiarist.”

How bees mate, how they swarm, how they manufacture honey, how they reproduce, how the colony is organized—every detail about bees is truly astounding, and well worth your time to study.

As you do, give thanks to God Almighty, your Creator, who gives you every breath of air your breathe; who thought out, designed, and produced all life! Studying into His fabulous creation—pondering it, thinking about it, meditating upon it—is a way to worship God!

How utterly barren is the life of an evolutionist, who does not know the true God!

How to Come to Know God

Such studies are not merely an “argument” against evolution. They are much, much more. God says the way to truly come to know the truth about our invisible Creator, who dwells in the spiritual dimension, is by studying into the things He has made!

Just as an artist is known by his paintings, or an architect by his buildings, so our Creator is known by His marvelous handiwork.

Paul wrote,

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold back [margin] the truth of God in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest [evident] to them; for God hath shewn it unto them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world [by looking at the material creation] are CLEARLY seen, being understood by the things which are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse” (Romans 1:18-20).

The power of God, the mind of God, and God’s love toward His creation are clearly seen by looking deeply into what He has made! Your own mind and your physical body is a part of God’s creation. Every insect, every bird, fish, and animal, is a part of God’s creation.

The awesome universe declares His glory, as does our sun, our moon, the progression of the seasons, and the daily rotation of the earth. Gravitation, the mysterious, gentle power which holds our universe and solar system together, and which holds you firmly on the earth, and determines the limits of the seas, is a manifestation of the power and majesty of God.

Lungfish, bees, all mammals, and all plants are a fabulous part of the wondrous works of God, and they display His power

It is not necessary to cave in to evolutionists, believing in theistic evolution. Such a concept makes God out to be a vague, distant, “First Cause,” a God who once put together all the forces and energies which govern the universe, then left His creation alone, so that a chance strike of lightning in a primordial swamp might have produced life!

Such a belief rejects divine revelation. It rejects the Bible out of hand, and therefore rejects Christ, for

“beginning at Moses [including Genesis!] and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning Himself” (Luke 24:27).

God’s Word is true. God is the Creator of the universe! And who was the member of the divine sovereign Godhead who did the creating?

“In the beginning was the Word [Greek: logos, meaning spokesman], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God:...All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made:...And the Word was made flesh and dwelt [Greek: tabernacled] among us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (John 1:1-14).

Your Savior was the member of the divine family who, together with His Father, thought out, planned, and brought into being lungfish and honeybees. He is your Creator and mine, as well!

As David declared,

“Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of thy hands” (Psalm 102:25).

He cried out,

“O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches!" (Psalm 104:24).

The next time you see a tiny honeybee buzzing from flower to flower, then making a “beeline” for his hive, remember to praise God for His mighty works!