It is still so hot and humid in the Plains that the approaching cold weather seems very far away. But the change of season is unstoppable and so are its attendant illnesses. One of the oldest curative substances known to mankind is honey. Indian honey comes in several delicious flavours such as multiflora, jamun and eucalyptus.
In the old days in Delhi, if you were lucky enough to have a beehive in your neighbourhood, the honey-man would come by seasonally and take out the honey. After filling as many jars as you wanted, he would sell the rest in the neighbourhood—genuine, unadulterated honey made from the garden flowers, to spread on hot buttered toast or drink with hot water and lemon juice if you had a cold or a sore throat. Nowadays the craze for harmful white sugar seems to be waning, and there is a revival of interest in healthy honey.
I recently read about a chapter in the Quran which celebrates the honeybee. It is called ‘An Nahl’ or The Bee. It talks about a number of topics, taking a strong line against ‘infidels’ and stating that Friday should be observed instead of the Sabbath. But it is specifically named The Bee to draw attention to the example upheld of the bee’s hard work and community service. The bee is considered one of Allah’s miracles in the Quran because it produces honey which is a panacea for humankind’s afflictions.
An Nahl has one hundred twenty-eight verses. The verses that mention bees are sixty-eight and sixty-nine. The Quran says in Verse sixty-eight:
‘And your Lord commanded the bee, saying: Build your home in the mountains, and on the trees and the trellises that they erect.’
And Verse sixty-nine says:
‘Then, feed on all the fruits
And follow humbly the processes taught by your Lord.
There issues from its belly a juice of diverse hues, in which there is a cure for the people. There is indeed a sign in that for a people who reflect.’
Verbs in Arabic are apparently male or female. The verbs used to command the bee and describe its untiring hard work are reportedly female, and the imperative ‘build’ in the Quranic verse above is apparently the translation of the Arabic word attakhithi, which is feminine.
The Arabs in the seventh century could not have known that worker bees are female. So, this usage seems highly intuitive and amazing. It also reminds us of the Bhagavad Gita, where Chapter sixteen is on ‘divine and demoniac natures’. I read that a number of the good qualities it lists for a person to have are ‘feminine’ grammatically.
Honeybees belong to the genus Apis. It seems they communicate with each other using a dance language, which has been studied by Europeans and discovered to be highly complex and coded. It further seems that a third of all the food we eat is a result of pollination by the honeybee.
But habitat loss is decimating its numbers. Apparently, a bee lives only forty days and produces less than a teaspoon of honey as its life output. This may seem so little in terms of human consumption—but what a prodigious effort for one short little life.
The honeybee’s best practices for living are truly worth emulating by humankind. I read online that bees can traverse long distances to find nectar. They then swarm back to the hive and let the other bees in on what they’ve discovered. Come summer, they keep their home cool by sprinkling water and fanning fresh air. When winter comes, they cluster together for warmth. They also make bee bread for the little ones, and keep their hive clean. Bees are very smart; when their hive starts to get too crowded, they know some need to leave and create new colonies.
Meanwhile, what do old Indian stories have to say about the honeybee? The bee figures a lot in Indian religious imagery, literature and compositions in Hindustani music, especially about the advent of spring. Modern Indian names for boys like Makarand mean ‘nectar’, and Milind means ‘honeybee’. Milind is said to be a name for Sri Krishna and denotes a successful achiever. However, what is probably the best-known bee story is actually a tree story. It is from the good old Panchatantra.
The story goes that a mango tree and a pipal tree grew side by side in the forest. One day, a swarm of bees came looking for a new home. Noting the fine, tall pipal tree and its cool shade, the queen bee asked the pipal if they could make their hive on it. But the pipal was proud of its grandeur and said inhospitably, “I don’t want any intruders on my person.”
Hearing this rude refusal, the mango tree spoke up. “You are welcome to make your home in my branches,” it told the queen bee. And so, the bees made a fine home for themselves on the mango tree.
One day, a couple of carpenters came along, looking for wood. They dismissed the mango tree because it harboured a hive, fearing being stung if they disturbed the bees. Instead, they exclaimed in wonder at the fine pipal tree and set about cutting it.
The pipal cried out in agony, and the mango tree responded at once. It requested the bees to save the pipal. The bees stung the carpenters, who ran away screaming. And so, the pipal was saved—a lesson on Nature’s complicity, and that being nice beats being nasty.