6) Inexplicable wonder
A. The Mysterious Dance of the Honey Bee
Without bees, agriculture could simply not exist. And without growing crops, you could not exist. Bees handle up to 80 percent of all pollination done by insects and some agriculturists estimate that each bee is worth about 100 dollars to American crop growers. Bees pollinate 50 different agricultural crops in the United States alone. To Show the importance of bees in pollinating, an experiment was performed. One branch of a pear tree was tied with gauze so that bees could
not get to it. The branch did not yield on single fruit. Another branch, with an
equal amount of blossoms, was exposed to bees. It produced 33 pears.
Bees are accomplished architects. Bees have a phenomenal memory for places.
In a sense, bees are map makers and map readers-being expert at finding their
way home through the use of landmarks. They can sense gravity. They possess
a sophisticated guidance system and navigation equipment.
Bees have a built-in clock by which they can tell the time of day. They have a
unique method of air conditioning the hive. Bees possess a built-in perfume
bottle. Through it, they let out a scent that will guide other bees to a certain spot.
Bees have a built-in polarizer and advanced orientation equipment in order to
navigate from place to place
In the United States alone there are 5 million colonies producing about 250
million pounds of honey a year and 5 million pounds of beeswax.
Bees must exist in colonies. A honey-bee cannot exist alone. A hive of bees is
one organism. Each member of that hive is merely considered a part of the
organism-which cannot exist unless all the bees cooperate in keeping the whole
functioning. A fairly strong colony will contain from forty to seventy thousand
bees.
It is a marvel of organization. Without a real leader-the queen merely being the
egg-laying machine-each bee knows what the needs of the hive are.
Beeswax is a remarkable substance. It has the highest melting point of any
known wax-approximately 140 ºF. This ensures that the combs will not melt
when the hive reaches 110º during the summer heat. The cells are miracles of
craftsmanship. The walls are only two thousandths of an inch thick- the same
thickness as the diameter of the hairs on your head. Yet, one pound of comb will
support at least 25 pounds of honey.
Each of the side walls combine to form a regular hexagon. Dr. Karl von Frisch, a
recognized authority on bee behavior, remarked: “The bees, with their hexagon
cells, have in fact discovered the best and most economical plan conceivable.
How they arrived at this, none of our learned men has so far been able to
discover. (The Dancing Bees, Karl von Frisch, pg 8.)
How did bees ever stumble upon the neat,
hexagonal rows that make up their combs?
“In all probability, insect architecture evolved over
immense stretches of time.” (The Insects, Peter
Farb, LIFE Nature Library, pgs. 77-7

But does it really work that way? Or is it only in
the imaginations of the authors?
“Actually it would be more appropriate to think of
them first of all as the great pollinators, without
whom many of the plants upon which mankind
depends would ‘disappear from the earth’” (“The
Honeybee” Ronald Ribbands, Scientific
American, August, 1955)
Which Came first? The plant needing to be pollinated by bees? Or the bees,
needing to manufacture their life Source-honey-from the pollen of the plant?
If the plant came first, then obviously they had to be the type of plants which do
not require pollination from bees. But if they didn’t require bees-then there was
no “motivation” or “resident force” which led to bees evolving to fill the
requirement- since the requirement didn’t exist. If plants were “surviving” without
bees then there was never a need for any other types of plants to develop certain
“coloration” and smells to attract bees-since there were not bees to attract.
A honeybee cannot exist alone. It must be a member from 40-70 thousand
workers, a number drones and one queen. But how did this begin? Did one
original “bee” evolve all by himself? Does evolution argue that perhaps millions
of “pre-bees” were going through various mutations and “gradual” changes which
finally all arrived at once as a full-fledged colony of bees, with workers, drones
and one queen?
What does this little “pre-bee” eat? Pollen” If so, then how come modern bees
don’t? They manufacture their food. They do it by an elaborate process,
including the most demanding engineering and construction, even to the
secretions of body wax, and chemical mixtures in the mouth, and clipping by
powerful mandibles into brick-like strips for the forming of perfect hexagonal cells
with just the right degree of slant, lip, and the identical, monotonously similar
appearance. And, there are no “Pre-Bees” of any kind found in the fossil
records.
Somewhere, somehow-there had to be that very first bee colony. There had to
be, sometime, somewhere, the very first honey-maker, wax manufacturer, pollengatherer,
and hive builder. There had to be the very first bee stinger. And the
very first queen, drone, and worker.
Unless bees sprang into existence suddenly, in a colony-with their little
computerized instincts causing them to do exactly as they are doing-they could
not have, by the wildest stretch of the most crassly uninformed, brutish, doltish
guesswork, have evolved gradually! With bees, colonies, wax and honey-and
the flowers, pollen, and plants-it’s either all or nothing at all. The difficulties for
evolution are endless.
When did the amazing dance originate? Where did their architectural origin
originate from? How did an entire colony evolve at once? How is it that all of
these intricate characteristics come to be fully functional at once in order for the
insect to exist?
What does all this prove? It proves evolution is impossible to accept-unless you
want to make of it a religion and accept it without proof, on empty faith.
(Armstong, Garner Ted; Kroll, Paul. “To Bee or Not To Bee-A Stinging Blow To
Evolution.” The Plain Truth. January, 1969 pgs. 23-30)