Thinking about bees

I have been reading books about bee keeping lately. I have long had a fascination with bees, honey, and the process of keeping a hive. I have had two dear friends who kept hives and produced honey. Neither of them is still living, but during their lives, both were a source of many conversations and deep support of my ministry. I miss them both.

Bill was an engineer, teacher, and academic administrator. He also had a huge number of projects on the side. He was an inventor with an incredible shop in his basement where he made all kinds of gadgets and things. He held several patents, including one that was a part of the production of color television. He was a consultant on all kinds of engineering and teaching projects around the world. Bill and I had very similar political opinions, but we rarely talked about politics. There was just too much else that held our common interest and passion. One of my favorite things about Bill was that he was always working on a project. I would ask, “What are you working on these days?” and receive a long explanation of a particular problem that others had brought to him for his advice and creative thinking. Near the end of his life he paid to have high speed Internet brought into the rooms at our regional hospital because he was spending a lot of time in the hospital and he needed Internet to do his work. About two hours before he died, he sent me an email that began, “There is some disagreement among the doctors as to the seriousness of my condition.” Bill was also a scholar of the Catholic theologian Erasmus. One of the treasures of my library is a copy of a book by Erasmus with Bill’s margin notes.

Al was a neurologist and a sleep researcher. His practice included decades of specialized work with children as well as many years of providing assistance for stroke recovery. Like Bill, Al always had multiple projects on the side. He loved singing and we sat next to each other in the church choir. He had a strong tenor voice and had trained his head voice so that he could sing in upper registers. He had a passion for barbershop singing and was always trying to recruit me into a local barbershop chorus. When he retired, he spent several years working as a traveling doctor and helped treat children with neurological disorders from Alaska to Montana to the Dakotas. Al and I had very different political opinions, so we rarely talked about politics. During our friendship, Al went through a divorce that never made any sense to me. He knew that I didn’t understand, and he tried for years to explain his decisions to me. Like politics, that topic of conversation faded over the years. When he was diagnosed with cancer, he approached his illness like a scientist, wanting to know the most minute details of the progress of the disease and the treatments. Unlike other physician friends, he defied the odds and lived with a high quality of life much longer than average for those with his diagnosis.

Both Bill and Al had been pilots in other phases of their lives as was I, so we talked about airplanes and flying quite a bit. I know several stories about their flight training and flying experiences and what kinds of airplanes they owned. Both Bill and Al kept bees and harvested honey. They shared a high degree of respect and fascination with bees and the organization of a hive. I would say that they both loved the insects, but I’m not sure that either would be comfortable with that language.

My personal fascination with bees goes back decades before I met Bill or Al, however. When we were children, my father was friends with a local bee keeper. This bee keeper sold honey for income for his family and developed a line of honey blended with butter and honey blended with peanut butter that they sold through local stores. My father worked with him on building hives and developing tools for bee keeping. He supplied our family with honey still in the comb. We loved to break off a bit of the comb and put it into our mouths, chewing the wax as it warmed and tasting the sweet honey. My Uncle Ted had us save him beeswax that he used to smooth the drawers in his toolboxes and for other functions.

When I was a young adult I suffered from seasonal allergies. I underwent a series of desensitization injections. In the beginning I received daily doses, changing to two shots a week and later to weekly shots administered over a year or more. As I was ending what was a very successful course of treatment, my allergist recommended that I eat a bit of honey every day from local bees. The minute bits of pollen in the honey would continue the desensitization. I have followed his advice and put honey in my tea each morning. I also seek out local bee keepers for a source of local honey.

During the age of enlightenment, throughout the 18th century, much of the science of bee keeping was developed. The practice of bee keeping is as old as recorded history, but systematized observation of bees and their behavior became well documented during that time. There was a special relationship between bees and clergy. Perhaps clergy had both the education and the time to keep bees and to record their observations. Perhaps there is something about the love of bees that has religious overtones.

In Hebrew, the word for bee is Deborah. Hebrew is a compact language with many words that have multiple meanings in English. Deborah is derived from the root “debar” which means “word.” One who proclaims debar is a preacher. In at least that particular corner of religious history there is a connection between speaking and bees. The word shares its root with midbar, and bar mitzvah, the coming of age ceremony that includes a public reading of sacred scripture.

Honey also has an ancient history as a source of healing. It has been prescribed as a treatment for a wide variety of human illnesses over millennia.

Bees, religion, and healing are all connected. Studying about bees also makes me feel connected with Bill and Al. Who knows, perhaps there is a hive in my future. Before that, however, I have much to learn.

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