Qur'anic verses - The Bee:

The Bee lives in almost every part of the world. They produce honey, which people use as food; and beeswax, which is used in such products as adhesives, candles, polishes, waterproofing compounds, and other products.

Flowers provide food for Bees. The Bees collect tiny grains of pollen and a sweet liquid called nectar from the blossoms they visit. They make honey from the nectar. The Bee's body is thickly covered with fine hairs. When a Bee travels from flower to flower, grains of pollen stick to these hairs. During their food-gathering flights, Bees spread pollen from one flower to another, thus fertilizing the plants they visit. This enables the plants to reproduce. Many important food crops, including fruits and vegetables, depend on Bees for fertilization. Scientists believe that over the years, Bees helped create the wide variety of flowers in the world today by spreading pollen among various plants.

The Bee Kingdom

A typical honey Bee colony is made up of one queen, tens of thousands of workers, and a few hundred drones. The queen is the female honey Bee that lays eggs. The workers are the unmated female offspring of the queen. The drones are the male offspring.

Honey Bees live in hives. The hive is a storage space, such as a hollow tree or a box, which contains a honeycomb. The honeycomb is a mass of six-sided compartments called cells. Worker Bees build the honeycomb of wax produced by their bodies. They also collect a sticky substance called propolis, or Bee glue, from certain kinds of trees. They use it to repair cracks in the hive.

Several workers always guard the entrance to the hive. The Bees in each hive have their own special odour,--a security pass. The guard Bees can detect Bees from other hives by their smell. The guard bees attack strangers, whether they are Bees from outside the colony, bears, or human beings. When the threat to the hive is great the guard bees give off a special pheromone (chemical substance). The scent of this pheromone alerts other Bees in the hive to come to the aid of the guards.

The making of the Queen

A colony needs a new queen if the old queen disappears or becomes feeble. A new queen is also needed if the old queen and part of the colony decide to leave and build a new hive.

In some unknown way, the workers select a few larvae to become queens. They feed these larvae only royal jelly. At the same time, other workers build special cells for the queens to grow in. The queen crawls out of the cell about 16 days after the egg is laid. Scientists believe Bees may add a special substance to the queen's royal jelly to make her grow faster and have a different appearance from the workers.

The old queen may leave the colony, or she may fight with the young queen. After the young queen has killed her rivals, she flies from the hive. She may mate with one or sometimes several drones. The young queen then returns to the hive and begins to lay eggs. A queen may live as long as five years and produce up to a million eggs during her lifetime.

Collecting food

Flowers provide bees with the pollen and nectar they use as food. Pollen is the young Bees' source of important fats, proteins, vitamins, and minerals. The sugar in nectar is mainly a source of energy.

Scout Bees search for food for the hive. When the scouts find food, they return to the hive and use a dance to tell the other bees where the food is in relation to the sun. The dance is similar to the one scout Bees use to indicate the location of a new hive.

If the food is located toward the sun, the scout makes a series of rapid runs in a modified figure-8 pattern up the honeycomb. If the food is located 30° to the right of the sun, the scout makes a series of runs 30° to the right of an imaginary vertical line on the honeycomb. The dance also indicates the distance of the food. The faster the scout dances, the closer the food.

Making honey

Flowers often have special glands that produce nectar. Worker honey Bees suck up nectar from the flowers with their long tongues and store it in their honey stomachs. In the stomach, a process called inversion breaks down the sugar in the nectar into two simple sugars, fructose and glucose. When the worker Bee returns to the hive, it regurgitates the nectar back through its mouth and puts it in an empty cell in the hive. As the water in the nectar evaporates, the nectar changes into honey. Workers then put wax caps on the honey-filled cells.

Labour

Laying eggs is the queen's only job. In the spring, the queen may lay as many as 2,000 eggs a day--about one every 43 seconds.

The only function of drones is to mate with queens. Honey Bee drones usually do not mate with the queen of the hive in which they live. They may fly miles away to mate with queens from other hives.

For the first three days of its adult life, a worker cleans the hive. It spends the next several days feeding developing honey bees. Then the worker begins to produce wax and to build honeycomb cells. After building the honeycombs, the worker stands guard at the hive entrance and receives nectar collected by other bees. Finally, when a worker is about three weeks old, it begins to hunt for food. It continues this job for the rest of its life.

Health benefits of honey

Honey is a sweet treat. But it is also good for many other things. It is good at treating many conditions.

Antibacterial properties: It eradicates infections and stop the growth of many bacteria. This is perhaps due to honey’s ability to promote beneficial bacteria.

Antioxidant: It plays a big role in the prevention of cancer as well as heart disease.

Preventing seasonal allergies: If you eat honey that is local to your area, it may prevent your seasonal allergies. Bees use the pollen from local plants and eventually it ends up in your honey.

Wound healing: It can be applied topically to disinfect and speed the healing process in wounds, scrapes and burns., and anti-inflammatory. Because honey contains hydrogen peroxide, it kills germs. It promotes the growth of healthy tissue. It reduces inflammation. It treats burns effectively, and promotes quicker healing, and less scarring.

Treating diarrhoea: It promotes the rehydration of the body and more quickly clears up the diarrhoea and any vomiting and stomach upsets.

Treating cough: It gives immediate relief in symptoms like cold, cough, sore throat, congestion of chest and runny nose, and make you feel better.

Ulcer relief: It is effective against duodenal and stomach ulcers. Try taking a generous spreading of Honey on a slice of bread. The bread is to ensure that the honey stays in the stomach for as long a period as possible.

Reducing fatigue: It may be beneficial to athletes by reducing fatigue. Honey is good source of glucose and fructose.

Cosmetic agent: It nourishes the skin. It has the ability to attract water. It can be used instead of alpha hydroxy masks because of its high content of the acid. It is also safe for sensitive skin. It is used as a moisturizing mask for your skin as well as your hair. A mixture of honey and olive oil can be used as a conditioner. Honey works well also on chapped lips. Because honey contains vitamins, minerals, and amino acids, it is a wonderful beauty aid that nourishes the skin and the hair.

Promote well being: It improves eyesight, relieves cough, cures asthma, benefits for high blood pressure, helps to purify the blood, reduces fat, cleans the bowels and strengthens the heart muscles and improves its functions.