Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper

Well, brethren, when we consider the world around us, we're often in the grand scale. We're just in awe of the grand scale of it all. And I think you guys have it a little bit nicer here. You do have some incredible mountains just right out the back door here that you can look at with the sisters there. But we see the vastness of the night sky dotted with the stars of these distant galaxies. We see the snowy peaks of the Cascade Range. The rushing creeks and rivers that we have here in Oregon, especially when we get all the rain that we get, they start rushing a little bit more. But we hear the crashing strength of the ocean. And we as humans, we marvel in that creation. We marvel in the creation that God has given to us. When we have opportunities to get ourselves away from the hustle and the bustle of the city, as we often do during the summer months in Oregon, we have a chance to get a certain degree of perspective that we simply can't get in an urban setting. When we get away from the city lights, when we get to a place where these innumerable stars become visible, we ponder the world. We ponder its intricacies, the vastness of the universe, these immutable physical laws that keep these bodies moving in a certain bit of Newtonian motion. And as we ponder and we watch, we see the hand of God in the heavens. And what we see is we see the Creator in His creation. And this action is common. It's not in the least bit unheard of. The psalmist actually did the same thing. We see David often contemplated creation as he looked to the heavens, and he pondered the vastness of the universe and tried to understand his place in it. Let's go ahead and begin today by taking a look at his words. Let's turn over to Psalm 19. We'll see a psalm that is an inspiration for one of my favorite hymns that is in our hymnal, but Psalm 19. We'll pick it up in verse 1, and what we'll see here is we'll see David's meditation on the handwriting of God within the creation. David, looking up, sees God's hand in what he observes. Psalm 19, verse 1. We'll go ahead and read through verse 10. Psalm 19, verse 1 says, It's rising as from one end of heaven and its circuit to the other end, and there is nothing hidden from its heat. The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.

David here takes a look at what he can observe and what he can see, and in very, very eloquent words, puts forth what God has designed and put together for us. Let's go back a few pages in your Bible to Psalm 8. Psalm 8 will see another reflection by David on the glory of God in the heavens, but this time he does something a little bit different. He looks at the glory of the heavens, he looks at what God has put together, and he extrapolates out something of the insignificance of man.

Looking at the insignificance of man, which really is the antithesis to the glory of God.

The insignificance of man against the glory of God, but yet he's in awe of the responsibility and the promise that God has given to man. So Psalm 8, and we'll pick it up in verse 1, we'll be going through verse 9 of Psalm 8. It says, O Lord, our Lord, well, it says to the chief musician on the instrument of Geth, O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is your name in all the earth, who have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants, you have ordained strength because of your enemies, that you may silence the enemy and the avenger.

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have ordained, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you visit him. For you have made him a little lower than the angels, and you have crowned him with glory and honor. You have made him to have dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea that pass through the paths of the sea. O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is your name in all the earth.

Now, these are just two of the many, many passages that David recorded within the Psalms that considered the heavens, that looked at his observations of the skies, his contemplations of the universe, of God and man. And I'm convinced, I am convinced, that David was a stargazer.

David was a stargazer. He was someone who came out and looked up, who looked up to try to understand his place in the world, to understand God and how all of it worked. To a certain extent, that may provide a pretty good explanation as to why he was on his roof that night when he spotted Bathsheba. He could have very well gone up to just kind of consider things and to look up into the sky. We don't have any way of knowing for sure, but you look at his writings and you look at his things and he's always talking about considering the heavens. He appears to be a man who looked up in his search for an understanding of God. And I would imagine that this is a trait that many of you can identify with. You know, we have a chance to get outside of the city lights and we have a chance to look up and we get to see those stars that are in between the stars that you normally see. You know, you get to get that little bit of extra depth of field. It's all inspiring to be thinking to yourself, how many millions of miles these different things are apart? And we're this itty-bitty little speck down here as all of that is going on. But not only did David understand that the glory of God was written in the stars above, he was able to understand his own place in the universe. He looked at the immensity of it, the motion of these celestial bodies, and he still pondered what man was to God. Why he cared so much about humanity.

That, like we said before, worked this small little insignificant speck in the whole scheme of it all. But we were given dominion over the entirety of God's creation, to be expected to care for it and be responsible for all that we see around us. We haven't done it well, but that's a sermon for another day. We have not done it well, unfortunately. Haven't taken great care of what we've been given.

But David looked up to see the handiwork of God. He looked up to prove the Creator. In recent months, I've turned the camera around. In recent months, I've turned the camera around. Not to say that I still don't look up. I still do. I'm still a stargazer. I'm always looking up and trying to find out if it's a planet or a star or what's up there. And they make these neat little apps on your phones nowadays. If you don't know what it is, you can just hold it up there and go, oh, okay, there it is. So that's really made stargazing much simpler than it used to be.

But what I've done is I've turned the camera around towards Earth, so to speak, and zoomed in on a very seemingly unlikely place and found the hand of God. And where I found that is in the humble honey bee. In the humble honey bee. Shannon and I became accidental beekeepers this past May. And when you hear how this happened, you'll understand why I say accidental beekeepers. At the beginning of April, Shannon and I had new neighbors that moved in to the north of us. Or south of us. South of us. That doesn't matter to the story, but might as well get it for clarity. But our first impression, the first opportunity that we had to meet, was they got to see me digging holes in our yard like some hyperactive gopher. And just, we're tearing out our front lawn and we're doing a whole bunch of other things. But that was our first inclination, and I thought as they're moving in and I'm just tearing out our front yard that they're just going to think we're just insane. And we told them what we were doing. We told them we were tearing up the front lawn so we can garden in it and everything else. And they thought it was a great idea. So we hit it off, right off the bat, which was really nice. But we kept talking. We got to know each other a little bit. I noticed when they were unpacking their things that along with all of their things that were coming in and being unpacked, there were several sets of hive equipment. Beehives. Langstrom boxes. Or Langstwyth boxes, rather. One day when we were both out in the backyard working, I struck up a conversation regarding the beehives. I was just curious. Because I'd gotten interested in this several years before. The Marion County Fair had a bee booth. And basically it was just these group of folks talking about beekeeping and everything else. And they had little demonstration hives there that you could look at. I thought it was fascinating. Seemed like a really cool deal. You get homemade honey for minimal effort. You get to wear a really cool-looking suit. And at that point, I'm in. I mean, I'm all over this. This sounded really fun to me. But then I started thinking about it. We had young children at the time. We still do. We had young children. And there's this issue of not having any idea of what I'm doing. I mean, there's that. And the fact that to have the bees, there would be a box with about 10,000 venom-laden stingers in it at any given time. And so because of those factors, not really knowing what was going on and having small children, I kind of went ahead and put the hobby of beekeeping up on the shelf. Thought, well, maybe it'll be something I can enjoy in my retirement, whatever. But as the years went on and I started reading more and more about articles on colony collapse disorder, losing pollinators left and right, staggering bee die-offs, you almost can start to see prophecy being fulfilled in the die-offs of these honeybees. You know, worldwide famine can come from a loss of pollinators. In fact, it's an interesting statistic and it's a frightening statistic, but of the 100 most important staple crops worldwide that provide food for the human race, those 100 staple crops provide about 90% of our food supply.

71 of those 100 crops are pollinated by honeybees. 71 of those 100. We are so unbelievably dependent upon all of God's creation working the way that God's creation was intended to continue working. And Einstein once said, and I paraphrase, we often say I quote, but I'm actually paraphrasing here, he once did say that if the bees were to disappear completely, that mankind had about four years before they would disappear as well, that the pollination was that important. And he recognized the importance of these tiny little creatures. But as we stood discussing beekeeping over the fence, she informed me she'd been doing this for about 15 years, but she wasn't planning on getting any bees because they were renting the house. And she didn't want to violate any rental agreements by having hives and whatever else. She said somewhat off the cuff, though, because she knew we owned our place. Maybe you guys can get bees or something. We'll just lend you our equipment. That was a mistake. Because now the wheel's returning. And I'm thinking, oh, okay, maybe this little hobby is a little more real than what we may have considered. So I started reading anything and everything that I could get my hands on regarding honeybees. Social structures, hive construction, life cycles, honey production, differences in honey from one source to the other, propolis, which they think is the ball magilliat, interestingly enough. Brood boxes, supers, extractors, started pricing hives.

In other words, I kind of jumped into this with both feet. The more I read, the more interested I became. But it was too late in the season for us this year to get bees. We were kind of stuck waiting another year. By April, most of the new hives is getting really late in the year to do it.

We figured we'd have about a year to figure out what we were doing. So imagine my surprise a couple days later when the neighbor called me over to show me her newfound bees. And it seems that while they had no intention of getting bees, nature had a whole other idea.

They had their hive boxes stored behind their shed somewhat haphazardly, but they had old frames in the hives. And somewhere over the couple of days since we had talked, they had a swarm come in and managed to get set up in one of those hives. So she invited me over. She said I had a bravery test to pass. And that was whether or not I could walk in amongst that hive and have these bees buzzing everywhere around me and not completely just lose it. I passed, which was kind of cool. You know, it is surprisingly calming to have these things zipping all around your head. It really is. That just insane buzz and everything going on. It really was a calming thing. So now standing in front of this hive with these bees buzzing everywhere. I had to have one now. I had to have one now. And so we're like, okay, we have to figure out how we're going to do this. We've got to figure this out. So she said, well, I kind of told her that we needed to think about doing this for next year and getting set up. And she goes, well, let's do this. Let's just take the spare hive and we'll set it up in your backyard and see what happens. It's like the odds of lightning striking twice.

But who knows? We'll see what happens. I kind of thought, well, okay, if they show up, then we were meant to have bees. If they don't, then okay. Great. God's got this figured out. So we set it up.

And it was actually in her backyard at the time. It was in a wheelbarrow waiting to get moved over.

And she called me over and sure enough, within about a week of talking, there was another swarm, in addition to the one that had already come into her yard that had taken up residence in these hives. So we ended up becoming accidental beekeepers. And that box of 10,000 venom-laden stingers is now sitting in the back corner of my garden. Now, despite all that reading, despite all the studying and all the learning I was doing, I still had this visceral feeling that I didn't know what I was doing. And the first couple times that I worked with that hive and opened it up and popped the frames out, there was a visceral feeling of, I don't know what I'm doing, and these things are everywhere, and I really don't know what I'm doing. But it's surprisingly easy. There are surprisingly low-maintenance organisms to try to keep. You just try not to get stung. That's really just the whole basis of it. But I started digging into the information even more. Now that I didn't know what I was doing and I had these things anyway, now it's time to really figure out what's going on. And so I read everything I could. I watched every video on how to do this that I could possibly do. And the more and more that I read, the more I saw the honey bee as an absolute fantastic proof of creation. Fantastic proof of creation. A couple of interesting little things that I came across. Honey bees have 6,900. That's 6,900 individual lenses that make up the compound eye that they have. 6,900 individual lenses inside all put together into one compound eye.

Their eyes are covered with fine hairs that help them determine wind speed and direction.

The little hairs tell them how fast the wind is moving and in which direction. They can navigate utilizing the sun. They can navigate using Earth's electromagnetic field. They communicate with their movement. They communicate by dance and they communicate by released pheromone, chemical signals. Their back legs are designed in a way to capture and carry pollen as they go from flower to flower. This one was fascinating to me. It's been proven after several experiments that they actually produce a negative charge while they fly. As they fly, they produce a negative charge so that when they land on a plant, the pollen literally jumps off of the flower onto them like static electricity. Their social structure is incredible. All the primary bees are female. The queen mates with the male drones lays up to 1,500 eggs a day. 1,500 eggs a day for the entirety of her life. These eggs become workers unless they're enclosed in a special cell and fed a special food in order to turn a regular female into a queen. They work tirelessly to collect nectar and pollen to make honey, which is a food that never spoils and has all the necessary nutrients to support life, including water. We have examples of people in the Bible who have survived on a diet of locusts and honey and thrived on a diet of locusts and honey. The list goes on. Honeybees exhibit what we refer to as, and this is a big scientific term, but we call it irreducible complexity. Irreducible complexity. And what that means is the only way for the honeybee to have existed in the beginning was for the hive, their social structures, and all of the biological components that we just talked about to be there in the first place as well. It's not like one bee could say, hey, why don't you come over here? We're gonna start this thing we call a hive. Okay, and so here's the deal. I'm gonna work and I'm gonna do this, and then you do this. Oh, by the way, you... okay, we need to find a queen. Um, where are we gonna find a queen? They had to have been all put together in the beginning with the complexity that comes with the honeybee for them to ever have survived in the first place. They couldn't have just evolved. They're irreducibly complex. Now, evolutionists, on the other hand, believe that honeybees evolved from a species of hunting wasp that adapted to a vegetarian lifestyle. And that is a true story. Now, I'm making it sound a little more sarcastic, but they completely deny the irreducible complexity of the honeybee, and they refuse to see the hand of a creator in these tiny organisms. In my time with my bees, and in the reading that I've done lately, and attempting to learn the ropes, what I've learned points directly opposite of the evolutionist position. Honeybees are an absolute proof of creation. What I'd like to do with the remaining time we have today is to take a look at three lessons about honeybees that I've learned in the process of accidentally beekeeping. And I hope to prove to you by the time we're done that these unique little insects are one God's gift to mankind. You know, an organism that allows us, that we've been given dominion over, that allows us to survive, but as well, just a fantastic, fantastic organism. Additionally, what I'd like to do with each of these examples is to draw a spiritual lesson from each of these examples also. So I've entitled this sermon, for those of you that like titles, Lessons of an Accidental Beekeeper. Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper. So as we continue this afternoon, we're going to examine three points. And the three lessons and the three spiritual lessons and examples that we're going to look at are, number one, that honeybees literally work themselves to death. Honeybees literally work themselves to death. That's point number one. Point number two, it's all in the family.

Point number two, it's all in the family.

And point number three, when threatened, they cluster together and get active.

When threatened, they cluster together and get active. So they work themselves to death. It's all in the family. And when threatened, they cluster together and they get active. In the first week with my hive, I could not leave it alone. You can ask my wife. I was out there constantly, watching them come in and out. It was like a little airport, just arrivals and departures constantly.

And they'd come out and they'd take off and then they'd come back in and they'd have little different colored pollens stuck to them, which was really cool to watch. It just made you wonder where all of them were going. But we had a little plant right in front of the hive. It's a catmint. Some of you that have gardens may know well what it is, but it's a catmint and they loved it. They were all over it. And what was interesting is you'd watch them fly and land and they'd get in there and they'd get the nectar and then they'd rub in and get the pollen and they'd go back and then they'd come back.

But I noticed as I looked a little bit closer that one of the bees was having a really, really tough time. Really tough time. Wasn't flying. Wasn't flying at all. In fact, was just crawling along the ground and crawling up the stems, but was still going about what it was doing. I thought, that's kind of weird. So I got down really close and I got a chance to take a look at it and managed to get it, coax it up onto my fingernail so I could actually get a really good look at it.

But it was then that I noticed its wings were absolutely shredded. Absolutely shredded. And I'd read about this. It just looked terrible. It was scratched up. It was beat up. Its wings were tattered, moving really, really slow. And in doing the reading that I'd read, I'd come across this. And what happens is, as bees reach the last few days or so of its life, as bees reach the last few days or so of its life, what ends up ultimately killing them is their wings literally wear out. So the little membranes that make up the wings with enough repeated beatings of the wing eventually wear out to the point where they tatter up like the sails on a ship and the bee can no longer make it back to the hive or out of the hive.

And so at that point in time, they ultimately starve or they end up, you know, getting too cold or whatever out into the fields. But they get tattered from all the work that they're doing during their life cycle. They live about 45 days. And this particular bee was nearing its expiration date. Now what was interesting was, I set it down where I'd got it and kind of just watched it continue doing its thing. And it climbed right up the stem of that catmint to the flower that I was sitting there looking at.

And it went about its business like it could still fly. It was getting its head in there, grabbing nectar, kind of grabbing pollen just like the other ones. And it would walk down the stem or walk from one to the next and try to get to the next one to continue doing what it was supposed to be doing as its own wings had given out.

It couldn't fly. It couldn't do its job, but it was still trying. It had a singular focus and a dedication to its task. Now researchers have actually shown that as the bee's life goes, their job in the hive changes. So they go between two groups. They have house bees, which is all the housekeeping tasks that go on inside the hive, and then they have field bees, and they do all the stuff that's outside of the hive, like gathering nectar and pollen and everything else.

So in the first one to two days of the bee's life, they clean up the cells inside the hive. They go along and kind of clean up after the hatches and everything else, make sure that they're still the right shape and nothing got mashed and wrecked. But they start cleaning up the cells beginning with their own. That's the first job they do when they come out.

They come out of the cell and then they clean up their own cell, and then they start cleaning up the other cells. They start doing their little job right there, and they warm the brood. Three to five days, if they live three to five days, they move on to feeding older larvae that are in the brood comb.

Six to eleven days in, they start feeding younger larvae. Twelve to seventeen days, they start producing large amounts of wax, building comb, carrying food, and doing what we call the mortuary duties, which is very unceremonious in bees. They just haul them to the front of the hive and throw them off the side, and that's that. They clean the dead bees out of the hive, just walk them out, toss them off the edge. Eighteen to twenty-one days, they serve guard duty. That's right at the edge, waiting for anything that might be coming in or me to get stupidly too close, and then they come and buzz you a couple times and go, hey buddy, back up. Okay, all right, all right, all right. But all of these jobs are house bee jobs. They're like housekeeping tasks that are required, though. If any of these jobs didn't get done, the hive couldn't survive. All of these jobs had to be present in order for the hive to be orderly maintained and functional. But the hive can't survive without pollen and nectar, either. And so at some point in time, they've got to go out and they've got to collect. Well, once they reach 22 days, 22 days old, until their death, they become a field bee, which means they now go out and they collect nectar, they collect water, and they pollinate plants and collect pollen and everything else. Now, interestingly enough, the older bees are given the more dangerous job, going out and foraging, because to a certain extent, and this sounds kind of morbid, they become more expendable over time. The younger bees are more crucial to the survival of the hive, in that it's taking care of the nucleus of the hive itself. But they work for their entire life. They don't take breaks. They continue to do their job. And as it was made popular in the old westerns, they die with their boots on, so to speak. Now, our spiritual life is not much different. Christ as much as told his disciples this, and his words are recorded in the book of Luke. Let's go over to Luke 9. Luke 9 will kind of see Christ's words to his disciples following a discussion of who the people were saying Jesus was. Disciples informed, and the words out, you know, they know who you are, and they believe you're the Christ. Disciples said, or he asked them to keep it to themselves. But he goes on in verse 23. Luke 9, in verse 23, he says, And then he said to them all, If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost? For whosoever is ashamed of me and my words, if him the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes in his own glory, and in his fathers, and of the holy angels. Now we know the symbolism that is involved with carrying your cross. We know that that was the final moments of someone's life in those days when they were about to be crucified, was to carry your cross up to where they're going to put you on it. And so when it comes down to this, he's telling them essentially, look, this is a way of life that you will live until the very end of your days.

This way of life, this spiritual work that we do to kind of grow closer to this standard that Christ has provided us, requires a commitment that's not taken lightly. We're to take up our cross daily. The spiritual life is a one-way street. It's a one-way street. A bit further down in chapter 9 of the book of Luke, we see a series of interactions with individuals where they desire to follow God, and they mention, hey, yeah, we'd like to follow you, but these commitments keep coming up that are more important. Christ repeatedly tells them, look, leave this behind, go preach the gospel. Don't let these other commitments take precedent. See, in verse 62 of Luke 9, verse 62, see after he talked to a person about burying his father, he says in verse 60, let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God. And another said also, Lord, I will follow you, but let me first go and bid them farewell who are at my house.

And this is where Christ really, it's a phenomenal, phenomenal statement. But Jesus said to him, having put his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God. Christ essentially tells his disciples, talk is cheap. Prove it. If you truly desire this life, if this is what you want, drop everything and do it. Don't blow smoke. If you start down this road, we have to have the strength to finish it. You can't put your hand to the plow and then turn away.

And realistically, if you think about what we understand about this way of life, we either get it right or we don't. Those are really our two options. We either get it right or we don't. Once we've truly committed our lives to God, there aren't any other options. We either stay committed to this life until the day that we die or we fall away.

What sorts of modern things are we finding in our life to put before God's commission? What are we throwing out there? What are we saying? Oh, I've got to go do this. You know, maybe, oh, well, man, I've got to work. You know, I've got to do this. I've got this going on. I can't seem to just wake up in time to get study. I can't find time to pray. The football game's on. We find all kinds of things to put before our relationship with God. And I personally struggle with this. Finding the time to study. And it's not because there aren't enough hours in the day. It's because my priorities are unbalanced. It's that my priorities are unbalanced and that's something I've been working on. But we have to be committed to this life. We have to see it through. We have to push ourselves to the very end of our lives. You know, and it sounds cliche, but to our last dying breath.

Pushing ourselves. Learning and growing the entire way. You know, we'll never reach a point where we quote-unquote have it made. Where we can just kind of sit back and go, well, I got it all taken care of. I can just now, I can coast to the kingdom at this point. You know, I don't have anything else to learn. I got it all figured out. No, we never reach that place.

We have to learn and grow continuously. And you know what? When we get to the end of our life, we will probably be tattered. We will probably be beat up and we'll probably be moving pretty slow.

But we have to continue doing that commission that we've been given.

The second point today is that it's all in the family. It's all in the family. And honeybee genetics are fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. And I'm not going to get into the really nitty gritty stuff because I'll be perfectly honest. Even after a degree in biology and teaching this stuff, it's hard for me to follow and understand. I've taken a whole semester of genetics and it's still a little shaky. But bees have a genetic condition known as haplodiploploidy, which is a mouthful. And basically what it means is they can produce both diploid cells as well as haploid cells using the same process. The only difference is whether fertilization has occurred or not.

Male drones come from unfertilized eggs while the female workers come from fertilized eggs.

Now females are diploid, meaning that they have two copies of the genetic material, one from mom, one from dad. Males are haploid. The drones are haploid. They have one copy of the genetic material just from mom. That's an unfertilized egg from the queen that makes the male drone. Now this is where the genetics become really interesting because there's a measurement of relationship in biology called a kinship coefficient. And what all it is is a measurement of how related someone is to someone else. Okay? So it's a measurement of how many ancestors and relatives they have in common and how many generations that goes back. And it's kind of a complex equation. I'm not going to try to explain it because I will just mess it up. But it has been used recently. We actually used it in the United States when they crafted incest laws in the U.S. If you are related to a certain coefficient, you're not allowed to marry because you're too related. Farther down the line, yeah, you could. You're not related enough, etc. In humans, though, here's the numbers. Parents to offspring. So parents to kids. They have an R value, which is the percentage of genetics in common of 50%. So if you're a parent, your kids have 50% of their genetics in common with you.

If your siblings, so full sibling to full sibling, blood brothers and sisters, straight across, have a measurement of 50%. Okay, they have half their genetics in common. Identical twins are 100%, okay, because the process of the twins allows for much stronger genetic tie. Now, in bees, it's really different. From a worker to a drone, so a female worker to a male drone, they're 50% in common. Half their genetics, because the queen laid the cell for the drone. Queen gave the cell to the worker. Queen to the drone, so the mom to the male to the son, I guess we could say, if we want to do. 50% also. Queen to workers, 50%. So workers to workers should be 50%, but it's not. Worker to worker is actually 75%. So what that means, and what all this mumbo-jumbo gets to, and you can check this out online. There's far better explanations out there than this, but one worker bee is more related to another worker bee than you are to your own children genetically. And that's fascinating. That's fascinating. So all of those female workers in there, those 10,000 venom-laden stingers, are all one big closely related family. One big, very closely related family. Now, they all have different jobs. They all have different lifestyles, and they all have different tasks within that hive. Not every bee is doing the exact same thing, but they're all one big family working together for a singular purpose. And that singular purpose is to strengthen the hive, to care for it, and to protect the hive. Let's go to Romans 12.

Romans 12. We're going to pick it up in verse 4. Romans 12 and verse 4.

Romans 12 verse 4 says, For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function. So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them. If prophecy, let us prophesy in proportion to our faith. Or ministry, let us use it in our ministering, he who teaches in teaching, he who exhorts in exhortation, he who gives with liberality, he who leads with diligence, he who shows mercy with cheerfulness. Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhoor what is evil. Cling to what is good. Verse 10. Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another. Not lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer. And despite our subtle differences, the various roles that we all fill within the church, we're all brethren. We're all brothers and sisters. We're all family.

Now, as such, we do have responsibilities. Just as some Vs have different responsibilities to keep the hive strong, keep the strong, have the hive strong and healthy, we also have a responsibility to keep our congregations strong and healthy and to care for and to love our brothers and sisters.

The worker bees in the hive do what they do for the rest of the bees in the hive.

That worker bee is not out there collecting food only for itself.

It's serving one another inside of that hive, selflessly. And that's the same calling we've been called to perform for our brethren. Let's go to John 13. John 13. John 13 verse 34.

John 13 verse 34 says, A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another. Verse 35, By all this, or by this, all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

You know, we have been called to love one another and to serve one another. And if we have this trait in our lives, we'll be recognized by those around us as followers of Christ. It's a symbol of His people, the love that they have for one another. John 15, just a couple pages forward.

John 15 verse 12 says, You know, Christ gave the perfect example of love by being willing to lay down His life for His friends, for all of mankind. And there is no greater example of love than this, to put our brethren first, to put our needs of our brothers and our sisters ahead of our own.

Now, we're all brethren, we're all spiritual brothers and sisters and children of God, if we're led by God's Spirit. Paul tells us in Galatians 5.13, we won't turn there, we might jot it down, Galatians 5.13, to use the gift of liberty and love that we have been given to serve one another, to use that gift of liberty and of love to serve one another.

The third point today, when threatened, bees cluster together and they become active. How many of you, if kids or as kids, threw rocks at bees' nests? Am I the only one? It's possible I'm the only one. I remember only doing that once, and I remember learning real quickly why you don't throw rocks at things like hornet nests. In fact, I had an incident at work this last week, I wasn't paying attention, and I don't mind honey bees having been around. I can go out there without any gear on or anything and open it up and look, and I'm fine with that. I'm calm, I'm okay with it. Hornets and wasps, on the other hand, I lose it with horns and wasps, and I was working on a window out at a portable at Sprague High School this last week, and I pulled a piece of window trim off, and all of a sudden, hornets just started pouring out of some place and started coming down at me, and I have never been run into the truck by a group of... I had to run into the truck and close the doors and roll all the windows up, managed to not get stung, but they came after me full bore. So they have ways of being aggressive, and they have ways of taking care of things. In fact, if you look in the Bible, any mention of bees, anytime they mention honey in the Bible, it's in relation to sweetness and to goodness. But when they mention bees, every single time the word bees is used and translated, it comes from being chased by a swarm of bees. It talks about how the Amalekites will come out against you like a swarm of bees. That's the only time they're referenced biblically is in a negative sense in that regard, because I think they knew well. You know, you don't... you're getting in there and getting that honey. You're going to get some stings if you're not careful. But I came across a video on YouTube, as I was kind of learning about all of this, that showed one method by which they attempt to protect their hive. Now, for those of you that are not aware, there is a species of hornet in Asia that happens to be primarily found in Japan called the Asiatic Hornet. They also call it the Japanese Giant Hornet. They're much like our hornets here in the United States, and you've probably all seen those legs dangling, you know, big nasty looking, gross bald-faced things. But the scary part about these Asiatic hornets is they're approximately five times larger than our bald-faced hornets, which are big. And our bald-faced hornets are large. They've got yellow jackets beat by about two times.

But literally, they're about the size of your pinky, these Asiatic hornets, from about here to here and about as big around. They're just monsters.

And apparently they're really mean. They're really, really, really mean from the sounds of things.

In fact, they kill something like 70 people in Japan every year when they attack. And they're awful. But they're one of the primary predators of the Western honeybee that are in Japan. And they've imported honeybees just like we have. They're not native to the United States. They're a European variety. And we brought them in, and we've brought them here. In fact, the Native Americans used to call them the white man's fly when we first brought them in. So we brought these things in, and now they're everywhere. But the video that I happened to see was shot by National Geographic. And you know how National Geographic works. They have incredible ways of getting footage of things. But what it shows is it shows one of these scout hornets from these these Asiatic hornets coming in and finding the hive at the beginning. And then they get footage of it painting the hive with what they call a pheromone. Basically, it shoots a little chemical spray onto the hive that marks it by scent so it can find it again. And then it turns around, and it flies off, and it goes back to its nest and comes back with 30 total hornets. What they called an invasion force on the National Geographic video. But those 30 hornets attacked that beehive. And when the dust settled, there were a few hornets dead. The bees managed to kill three or four. But the invading force had wiped out a hive of 30,000 western honeybees, including the queen. They just went through, and it is like watching a war movie. I mean, they're just going through and absolutely destroying these honeybees. They literally tore the nest apart. There were no living bees left over when it was done. And what's interesting, they don't want the honey. They come in and they rob the larva, and they actually take the comb. That's what they feed their larva, is the honeybee larva. So they go through and cell by cell remove the larva, and then take it back to their hive to feed their own young. Now, they're not nice insects, and they're not nice to humans either. We said earlier they kill about 70 people a year in Japan. One source said the hornet actually will get a large bite of human flesh and hold on so that it has leverage to continue stinging. Like it'll actually bite in and dig in so that it can just keep hitting you in the same spot over and over and over and over again. They're not good at all. And I'm really thankful we don't have them here, though. It sounds like they're spreading into Europe right now. From Asia, they're starting to get into Europe. So I'm sure it's a matter of time before they make it to the East Coast with somebody, you know, bringing something over. But what was really interesting was there was another video. This is the one that was more fascinating. And what it was was it was the second half of the first one. So they'd split it into two on YouTube. And you can look both of these up on YouTube. They're worth a watch. I can't remember what they are, but you can type in, Asiatic Giant Hornet versus Western Honeybee or something, and it'll come up. But the second half of this first video showed the honeybee's defense mechanism against the hornet. And what it showed was a scout arrived to paint the hive just like before. Only what was interesting was this time the hornet went inside the hive to mark it. The last one just got on the outside, marked the outside, and went. For whatever reason, this one came inside.

And all the honeybees let it walk inside. National Geographic's got this shot. You got a frame of bees behind it. You've got the hornet in the foreground. And what you can see is this hornet just walking remarkably close to where these bees are at. And the bees look like they're just ignoring it. But all at once, you see all of them with their tails go, dink, dink. And the narrator makes the comment that the plan was communicated at that point in time. That that movement and that pheromone release said, here's what we're doing, and here's when we're doing it. Now that's incredible. I mean, we think about how we communicate. That's an advanced form of communication.

But not just one of them, not just a couple of them, but all of them at once. Dink, dink. And a release of the pheromone. The hornet didn't have a chance. Once the plan was executed, those bees went from the frame and just went all over the hornet, surrounded it completely. And I'm watching this thing in my living room cheering on the bees. Yeah! Stink it! Get him back! You know, vengeance! And thinking... But what was interesting is that the narrator says, well, but the honeybees do not sting the hornet. I'm just deflated at that point. I'm going, oh, come on! They don't, but what they did next was incredible. They switched the camera over to thermal imaging. And so they clicked the camera over from regular visible spectrum to thermal imaging, where they can capture heat signatures. And what's really interesting is you can see this ball of bees wrapped around this hornet. And on the outside, it's a little bit blue or a little bit purple, and then it gets a little bit more orange and a little bit more red and a little bit yellow, and then even a lighter yellow. And the dead center of that ball of bees was hotter and hotter and hotter. And the narrator describes that the western honeybee has an upper heat tolerance of 118 degrees Fahrenheit. So they can survive up to 118 degrees and they start dying off.

But he made the comment that the Asiatic hornet can only survive 115 degrees.

And the measurement of the inside of that ball of bees was 117 degrees. Those bees had managed to heat that ball of bees up to one degree below their terminal temperature. And what they did was they literally cooked that Asiatic hornet. Literally cooked it. And all the bees did, and this is what the narrator discussed, they did this by balling together in this large conglomerate, and each individual one started vibrating. And as they vibrated, as they agitated, and as they continued to move, each individual bee vibrated their body back and forth, and that raised the temperature of the entirety of that conglomerate. Folks, that mechanism did not just evolve. That did not just evolve. That was not a situation where this group of bees said, hey, so here's what we're going to do. Here comes this thing. We're going to try this. We're going to see if it works. I'm not really sure if it does. We're going to check this out. That's not how this happened. This was completely designed from the get-go. God has created these organisms to be absolutely incredible, incredible little creatures. But regardless of its origins, it is an incredibly effective method to dispatch of intruders to the hive that are bent on devouring the hive's population.

As the level of activity in these bees increased, so did their group temperature. They got hotter as a whole and as a group by each individual becoming more active. Let's turn to Peter, 1 Peter 5 and verse 8. And we'll see. We definitely have an adversary. We know this. 1 Peter 5 verse 8.

We also have something out there that is bent on destruction.

1 Peter 5 verse 8.

It says, Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. And if you look up the word study on that word devour, it means to literally gulp whole. This isn't like, you know, this, and I always, again, a little cliche, but this way of life isn't a game to Satan. It's not a game to us, but we have an intruder in our lives and this life that we have here is an opportunity for him to deny us eternal life with God by attempting to get us to forsake him. Satan desires for us to get so fed up with everything, to get so out of balance with God and our relationship with him, that we ultimately just walk away. And sadly, we all know folks who have been there. We all know folks who have been there. If you turn over to Ephesians 4, we'll see that there are certain attitudes that put us at a bit more significant proclivity to his influence, Satan's influence, in our lives. And if we have these attitudes in our lives present frequently, we're far more at risk for invasion. So Ephesians 4, Ephesians 4, we'll go ahead and start in verse 26. Ephesians 4, verse 26, it says, Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your wrath. And verse 27 is the one that I really want to focus on here. Nor give place to the devil. And some translations have place-rendered foothold. So it's almost like if you've ever seen people that rock climb. You know, there are certain places they have to get their feet in order to get anywhere. Just like in certain places in our life that if we're not careful, we give Satan a toehold or a foothold in our life for him to be able to get in there. So there are certain attitudes such as anger that don't allow us to control ourselves easily. And these give Satan kind of a chink in our arm or a place where he can wriggle his way through that protection and get to us personally. And so spiritually, when we have this happen, when we're upset or we're tired or we're distracted or for whatever reason, we're not as vigilant as we should be, maybe we've gotten complacent. Maybe we've gotten complacent. When Satan gets through the armor and comes after us personally, what is our defense mechanism? How do we fight that? Do we sit and feel sorry for ourselves? Kind of get this feeling that we're just not worthy of being called, that God couldn't possibly want a sinner like us.

Might as well just call it quits. He doesn't want us. I won't ask for a show of hands, but I'd venture a guess in talking with a lot of others. Many have had this thought process at one time in their life. I know I've had it. I know I've had it. And that's exactly what Satan wants. This is one of Satan's broadcasts. Send that out there. Get that in your head so you keep thinking about it. Oh, he couldn't possibly want me. I just, I can't ever get anything right. I can't do anything right. That's the attitude Satan wants to cultivate in our lives and to allow it to take root and to grow. But it doesn't lead to success. It leads to a downfall. Instead, what we need to do is we need to ball up, get together, and agitate. Agitate. And I'll tell you what that means in a second. It means getting with people of like mind and pushing each other to growth and to warmth. Heating each other up. So Hebrews 10 talks about this concept in some different verbiage. Let's go over to Hebrews 10.

Hebrews 10. We'll take a look at the account in verse 24, looking at what we've been admonished to do. Hebrews 10 verse 24. And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works.

Verse 25. Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the day approaching.

You know, when we come together and we assemble ourselves, we need to be provoking one another to spiritual growth. Exhorting each other, encouraging each other to love and to good works.

Sharing with one another our difficulties. Asking for prayers when we need them. Encouraging one another, edifying one another. And you know, as the time of Christ's return draws closer, it's even more important. Because God's not going to accept complacency. God's not going to accept complacency. We see that in Revelation 3. Let's go to Revelation 3. Take a look at the words that God gave the Church of Laodicea. Revelation 3. We're all familiar with this particular passage. We've been through this before, but I do want to focus on one extra thing in here that it seems like sometimes we quit right before we get to this. It seems like we stopped the reading right before we get here, so I want to make sure and focus on that today. But Revelation 3 and verse 14 says, "...and to the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write, these things, says the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God. I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish that you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth. Because you say I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing, and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. I counseled you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich, white garments that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed, and anoint your eyes with eyesave that you may see." Now, here's the one that we want to look at. "...As many as I love, I rebuke and I chasten. Therefore, be zealous and repent." You know, just as the honey bee surrounds their adversary and heats themselves up, brethren, we too must gather together with people of like mind when we have difficulties, when we have trials, provoking one another to become more zealous, to become more hot, to push harder, to reach further, kind of push each other to fan the flames of the Holy Spirit, as God discusses in 2 Timothy 1. As an individual, we can't complicate the fact that we are not as an individual. We can't combat our adversary as effectively as we can with our brethren's support.

You know, how often do we gather together with our brethren outside of services? How often do we get together for coffee? Do we get a beer, maybe, and hang out and talk about our difficulties of that week? Do we encourage one another, discuss Scripture? God's planted our place in it. You know, we can't forsake our assembly together. We really can't lone wolf our calling, and our assembly just cannot happen one day a week at services. We've got to be getting together and pushing each other more. And realistically, now is as good a time as any to get to know each other better, to spend time with one another outside of Sabbath services, helping and encouraging one another.

But as we bring things to a close today on this beautiful Sabbath afternoon, there are many more lessons that can be learned from the humble honey bee. We've really only scratched the surface. Like I told you before, the more I read, the more absolutely fascinated I become. And the more that I see these incredible things that God has put in these little insects, they are an intricate proof of God's creation, and spending time amongst them, surrounded by their buzzing, is enriching to both body and spirit. It really truly is. Observing and considering the behavior and the interaction of the astonishing little insects shows the handiwork of God, loud and clear. Proof of creation doesn't just occur on a grand scale.

Turn the camera around. As you dig deeper into the small things of this world, more and more proof of the incredible design and architectural capabilities of our Creator becomes apparent.

And the lessons that we can learn from these tiny little organisms becomes more and more incredible. We actually had a neat situation out at a camp. We, uh, family got in this cabin up out of Nohalem, Nohalem area. We came across the most beautiful little iridescent beetle.

This thing was painted all kinds of blue and this purple, just beautiful! And you're thinking, it's a beetle! And it's been adorned like this! I mean, it's incredible. That grand scale, just amazing what happens when you look closer and you look down at things. But, brethren, like honeybees, we are our social creatures. We work together. We communicate with one another.

We work towards the same goals. We have the same calling. And we all are working towards the standard that Christ has provided us. And we have to be working towards that standard to our dying day, constantly working towards growth. We've been called to serve our fellow brethren, our family, and we need to band together when it comes time to get active and defeat our adversary.

You know, God promised his people a land flowing with milk and honey, and the humble honeybee was a crucial part of that equation.