A Meditation on a Bee

May 30, 2023

A Meditation on a Bee

A Rare Chinese Honey Bee

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West)

I saw this little friend this morning and was very happy that she let me take a picture. Bees are one of the most important pollinators, and they are under threat around the world because of human mismanagement and overuse of pesticides. They are incredibly rare now in East Asia, and many provinces use humans to pollinate fruit trees!

To us, bees represent the natural order that God created and which man so carelessly imbalances without being able to ever truly replace. My mind goes to the precipice humanity faces with A.I., and how all of our “miraculous” inventions have stripped away a part of our humanity, even as they make life a bit “easier.” We become less and less like the bees and more like the machines we create, leaving behind the pollen and nectar of the Garden of Eden for the soot and ash of a burnt and hellish desert of our own construction. “Thinking themselves wise they became fools, and loved and served the creature more than the Creator” (Romans 1:22-23).

In the Bible, bees represent victory and the fruit of good labor, often seen as a prophetic omen of God’s people triumphantly rising against evil (Exodus 23:28, Jude’s 14:8, Deuteronomy 1:44, Isaiah 7:18, Psalms 118:12). The bees taking up residence in the skull of a donkey was seen by Samson as an icon of God’s victory over the Philistines. The sweetness of the work of bees overcoming the stench of death brought on through man’s disobedience.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church uses honey wine in Holy Communion, literally allowing the work of bees to become the Precious Blood of Christ; and the Syriac Tradition has “The Book of the Bee,” which compares a Christian’s spiritual and ascetical life to the work of these little insects. Embroidered bees and honeycomb are just as much Early Christian symbols as Grapes, Loaves and Crosses ever were.

We can only be triumphant Christians if we are busy like the bees, organized like the bees, and under authority like a bee hive is submitted to its Queen. God instated judges as prophetic captains over His people, priests to lead the worship, and this ordering the People of God under a hierarchy of busy-bee leaders did not change in the New Testament.

Christ gave authority to His Holy Apostles, and they left Bishops in every place (I Timothy 3:2-7, Titus 1:7-9) to order and move the Church like bees are directed - in mutual submission, sharing, storing up in the fat months of summer to share in the lean months of winter, and to always be taking care of the spiritual babes, fed the milk and honey of the Holy Scriptures and Church Tradition (the “teachings” which St. Paul called by the Greek word “Paradosis”, 1 Corinthians 11:2, 2 Thessalonians 2:15, 3:6).

I greet the coming of this little friendly bee this morning with joy and prayer, and ask God that we can become like her, even as our modern world attacks and destroys us, and makes us just as rare and busy as this little worker in a pomegranate flower.