Exalted be God, the King, the Real. There is no deity but Him, Lord of the Noble Throne. (Surat al-Muminun: 116)
Scientists have performed a great deal of research to determine how
the order is maintained in the hive, in which tens of thousands of bees
live. A large number of academic studies have been carried out to that
end as well. One prominent expert and professor at the University of
Munich, the Australian zoologist Karl von Frisch, has devoted an entire
350-page book to bee communication, The Dance Language and Orientation of Bees.How Do Bees Communicate?
To find food, bees must usually search wide areas and fly long distances. When a bee finds a new source of food, it immediately returns to the hive to inform the other members of the colony. Shortly afterwards, other bees begin flying around the source.
Bees are deaf, and cannot therefore establish communications by means of sound.72Nevertheless, they are able to communicate the location of a food source to the other members of the colony with no difficulty. The methods they employ are quite extraordinary.
Scientists studying how bees inform each other of the places they find made a most astonishing discovery. Bees “describe” the location of a distant place by dancing. All the information that other bees need to find the food source-its distance from the hive, its direction, productivity-is encoded in this dance.
Once it locates a new food source, the bee returns to the hive and starts repeating specific movements in such a way as to attract the other bees’ attention. All the information they need about the food source can be obtained from the bee’s general behavior. For instance, if a bee simply returns to the hive, deposits its load of collected pollen and flies off again, this means that the source that the bee used is either already known or else not very productive. At times when water is scarce, they’ll also use this dance to describe the location of water.73
The Bee Dance
 |
|
Karl von Frisch has spent his entire life studying bees and won a Nobel Prize for his research on that subject.
|
The bee dance takes two distinct forms, depending on the distance of the food source.
The form known as the “round dance,” encountered most frequently, doesn’t bother to indicate the food source’s distance and direction. It does, however, tell the workers that the source is closer than 15 meters (50 feet) from the nest. Having located a food source, the bee first gives nectar to the workers in the nest, and then begins her dance, repeatedly making small circles. The other bees then gather around the dancer. She reverses direction and turns around the other way every one or two revolutions, or even more often. This dance, which can last for a few seconds or up to minutes, consists of up to 20 reversals and is followed by another exchange of nectar between the dancer and the bees in the nest.
Eventually the dance comes to an end. The
dancing bee flies off to look for another source of food. In one
experiment, Karl von Frisch showed that of the 174 bees who made contact
with the dancing bee, 155 found the food source within five minutes.74The form known as the “round dance,” encountered most frequently, doesn’t bother to indicate the food source’s distance and direction. It does, however, tell the workers that the source is closer than 15 meters (50 feet) from the nest. Having located a food source, the bee first gives nectar to the workers in the nest, and then begins her dance, repeatedly making small circles. The other bees then gather around the dancer. She reverses direction and turns around the other way every one or two revolutions, or even more often. This dance, which can last for a few seconds or up to minutes, consists of up to 20 reversals and is followed by another exchange of nectar between the dancer and the bees in the nest.
The bees perform their dances on the vertical comb, in the darkness of the hive-most important in helping us better understand bees’ flawless abilities to communicate. In the pitch dark, bees give the other workers around them all the information they could possibly need about the food source. Although their movements on the combs are performed in darkness, they are still correctly perceived by their fellows and immediately followed up.
In the same way that bees perform a round dance for food sources within 15 meters of the hive, they perform “transition” dances for sources from 25 to 100 meters (80 to 330 feet) away. They use the “waggle” dance, what’s also known as the “figure-eight dance,” to notify other bees of the distance, direction and quality of food sources further than 100 meters (330 feet) from their hive.
When the bees return to the hive from the food source, they perform this dance on top of the honeycombs. As the workers take their steps, they also shake their abdomens. The form of this characteristic movement closely resembles a figure-eight. In a typical dance, the bee moves in a straight line for a short distance, moving its body from side to side approximately 13 to 15 times a second.
 |
 |
|
The drawing above shows with wavy lines the
figure-eight dance bees perform to provide information about the
distance of the food source.
|
When bees return from a food source, they dance
on the comb. To the side can be seen a bee performing the dance when the
food source is nearby. The bee makes two semi-circular lines, then
returns to the starting point.
|
By varying the angle between
the waggling run and an imaginary line running straight up and down, the
bee conveys the direction of the food source. If a line is drawn which
connects the food source and the hive, and another line which connects
the hive and the spot on the horizon immediately below the sun, then the
angle formed by the two is observed to be the same as that of the angle
in the waggle dance. Just like civil engineers, the bees are able to
triangulate.75
Throughout the oscillatory movement in the waggle dance, the bee’s
abdomen is the most important organ. A buzzing sound is given off thanks
to vibrations from the muscles and exoskeleton. At the end of each
straight line, the bee turns in one direction and makes a semi-circular
return to her starting point. She then moves forward again in a straight
line, making a semi-circular return in the exact opposite direction. As
with the round dance, the waggle dance ends with the dancer stopping
and distributing food from its honey stomach to the workers around it.
The bees watching the dance may sometimes produce a sound lasting from a
tenth to two-tenths of a second. This causes the dancer to stop and
exchange food with the buzzing bees. Both nectar and pollen gatherers
dance in the same way.
 |
|
The sickle-shaped transition dance performed by very different species of bee
|
The
bees watching this dance are easily able to locate the food source. One
feature that establishes distance is the dance tempo, measured by the
number of turns every 15 seconds, and the duration of waggling and
buzzing on every straight line. For more distant food sources, the dance
tempo slows and speeds up for closer ones. The time spent in the
straight run increases for more distant sources.76
Throughout the dance, the other bees crowd around the one “dancing
this description” and follow its every move. They also touch its
waggling abdomen with their antennae. This movement is most important,
because they perceive the vibrations produced by the dancer and thus
establish the distance of the food source.77 In
order to describe a distance of 250 meters (820 feet), for instance,
the bee will shake its abdomen 5 times in 30 seconds. It has been
observed that by means of these dances, bees are able to inform one
another of food sources at distances of up to 9 to 10 kilometers (5 to 6
miles).
 |
|
1- If the food source lies exactly in the
direction of the Sun, or in the exact opposite direction, the waggling
runs in the dance will be vertical on the comb. 2- If the food source is
80 degrees to the left of the Sun, this is indicated by doing the
waggling run part of the dance at a corresponding angle of 80 degrees to
the left of the vertical. 3- If the bee follows an upward direction in
its waggling run, it signals that the food source lies in the direction
toward the Sun. And if it heads straight downwards, this means that the
source lies in the exact opposite direction from the Sun.
|
For bees, another essential piece of information is the
quality of the food at the source. This they obtain thanks to the scent
that has settled on the bee performing the dance.
In the light of the information thus communicated, it is an easy
matter for the other bees to find the food source. The number of bees
that gather at the source is directly proportionate to the number of
bees performing the dance. If a single bee performs it, the whole hive
does not go into action. First, a group of scouts leaves the hive. If
that group also performs the dance on their return, then more bees head
towards the target. The better the food source they find, the longer
they dance and the more bees follow them. In this way the food
gatherers’ attention is always focused on the most productive source.
 |
|
Bees watch the dancing bee in their midst, then find the food source by following the
directions given. |
In the event that the food source found is unproductive,
the bees still dance-but they do so unwillingly, and for a shorter
time. This is also reflected to the other bees in the hive, and those
bees that gathered around the dancer soon disperse, and a new team
leaves the hive in search of food.
Consider that the honeybees that perform the dance are just a few
centimeters long, the same insects you encounter when you go outside,
walk in your garden or sits out on a balcony. There’s an interesting
contradiction here. People regard honeybees as ordinary, familiar
insects, yet the phenomena we have seen so far can only be carried out
with a very definite consciousness. Were you to ask human beings to give
the same directions that the bee does by dancing, they would be nowhere
near as successful. That’s because although human beings possess reason
and consciousness, they lack the ability to perform such minute
calculations without technical measuring equipment.So who teaches bees this conscious behavior? They cannot learn it from other bees, and there is no training period in their brief lives. They come into the world already possessed of this knowledge, able to act upon it when the time comes. That applies to all the bees on Earth, who have been living on it for tens of millions of years.
We therefore find ourselves facing a major truth that no person of good conscience can possibly deny: God, the Creator of all living things, has flawlessly created honeybees and taught them such conscious behavior. As revealed in Surat an-Nahl, they act in accordance with the inspiration of our Lord.
To fully comprehend the significance of the description that bees make by dancing, we need to consider their movements in the hive and their overall environment. In her bookThrough Our Eyes Only?: The Search for Animal Consciousness, the evolutionist author Marian Stamp Dawkins discusses how the bees give these directions:
The problem the bees have is that they often dance on the inside of a dark hive where neither the food itself nor the sun is visible. Not only that, but they are dancing on a vertical comb when information has to be given to the other bees about which direction they should fly in the horizontal plane.78
Although the bees giving the directions dance on a
vertical surface, the bees going out to seek the food source will
operate in a horizontal plane. In other words, the information about
which direction they must take should actually be expressed in a
horizontal plane. If the bees were to act according to directions given
in a vertical plane, then they would fly straight upwards, and it would
be totally impossible for them to find any food.
In her book, Dawkins continues:The bees cannot, therefore, indicate the direction of food by simply pointing or dancing towards it. They translate the flight path from hive to food (which will eventually be taken relative to the sun) into a direction relative to gravity inside the hive and the other bees retranslate this back into instructions relative to the sun when they get outside. So if the food is to be found by flying directly into the sun, the dancer will dance so that she does the straight “waggle” run precisely vertically on the comb, whereas if the food is to be found by flying at an angle of 40 degrees to the west of the sun, she waggles 40 degrees to the left of straight vertical. She thus substitutes angle with respect to vertical for angle with respect to the sun and conveys, in the darkness of the hive, information to her companions as to the direction they should fly when they get out into the sunlight.79
 |
|
If the food source they find is very rich, the
dance the bees perform is very enthusiastic. If the source is nearby,
they describe its location by performing the “round dance” shown on the
left. For food sources that are further away, they perform the
figure-eight dance seen on the right, with wagging movements.
|
Consider: Bees fully understand the directions, even
those are given in the dark and in a different plane, and always head
straight towards their target. The movements made with respect to a
vertical line established by the dancing bee are fully understood by the
others, which are capable of calculating angles.
In light of this, Dawkins expresses her thoughts in these terms:
The fact that they do this [calculating angles] correctly shows that bees do indeed convey information to each other.80
In short, all honeybees are able to calculate angles. Dawkins
interprets this as bees conveying information to each other. However,
there are important questions that require an answer. How did bees
discover this method of calculation? Is it possible for the bee, simply
by looking at the Sun, to distinguish between vertical and horizontal,
to add the angle to the direction it gives, and always to do so
accurately? How did other bees gain the ability to interpret this? How
did they first learn to use the Sun as a reference?
 |
An experiment was performed to show that bees
make use of surface shapes to recognize their surroundings. First, bees
were introduced to the food source shown in the top left-hand corner.
Then as soon as they left the hive for the source indicated, they were
caught, brought to the point at bottom right, and released there. Even
though the food source was not directly visible, the bees were able to
head in the right direction, toward the food source.
|
 |
One species of honeybee, known as the dwarf
honeybee, always constructs its hives in the open. When they find a food
source, they generally dance on top of the nest covered with bees
(left). These bees perform the figure-eight dance to point to the food
source directly. If for any reason they dance on the sides or rear of
the hive, they redirect their dances again to indicate the direction of
the source.
|
Obviously, bees cannot calculate planes and angles and
other such mathematical functions on their own. There is only one
explanation for all these complex abilities in bees. Bees are directed
by a superior power, which belongs to God, Ruler of all the universe,
Who gives bees all their sophisticated attributes.
How Do Bees Find Their Way in Cloudy Weather?As bees fly towards their food source, they observe the Sun. This is essential if the scout bees are to make use of the angle and direction indicated in the dance.
Yet bees are not limited to this remarkable achievement, and engage in activities even more extraordinary. Even if the weather is cloudy, they can use the Sun by means of its ultraviolet rays, which are able to pass through cloud cover as long as it is not too thick. The worker bees use these rays to establish the location of the Sun. The natural light from the Sun is polarized, in other words, the direction of vibrations of the light waves changes regularly as the Sun moves in the sky. This polarization cannot be seen by the human eye, although bees and many other living things can perceive it. Cloudy weather that makes the Sun invisible represents no obstacle to these creatures. Despite the clouds, bees think of the sky as being parceled up, and calculate where the Sun should be at a given moment.81 No doubt, this attribute is one of the examples of God’s superior creation that enables bees to survive.
 |
|
Bees use ultraviolet rays to find their way in
cloudy weather. These light rays can penetrate the cloud cover so long
as it is not too thick. The bees follow these rays emitted by the Sun
and are able to calculate where the Sun must be at that moment.
|
 |
|
Bees describe the location of the food source on the
comb’s vertical plane. Yet as the picture to the side shows, the
destination lies on the horizontal plane. Nonetheless, the bees fully
understand the directions given and reach the source by calculating the
necessary angles. The inspiration of God is the source of this
astonishing ability.
|
|
BEES’ MEMORIES
It has been established that after watching the dance of
a forager, the other bees in the hive do not immediately set off in
flight. First they analyze the information provided in the dance and
decide whether to act upon it.
In one experiment, a small boat was anchored in the middle of a lake
near a hive, and food was placed in it. The bees eventually discovered
this food, immediately returned to the hive and danced to tell their
fellows of the direction and location of the food source. But even
though they danced for a long while, the other bees disregarded their
information and remained in the hive.The boat was then pulled to the shore. A number of bees again found it, returned to the hive and began dancing. This time, the other bees left the hive and headed for the boat. From this, the scientists concluded that bees were aware of their surroundings and knew there was a lake there. Since there could be no food source for them in the lake, they ignored the first bees’ “mistaken” dance. James and Carol Gould, The Animal Mind, p. 106. |
As stated earlier, shortly after watching the dancing
bee, other workers leave the hive and head off for the target. However,
bees also face an important problem: The angle that the dancer gave to
her sisters is based on the Sun. Yet the Sun is not fixed in the sky,
but changes position by 1 degree every 4 minutes. If a bee followed the
original line, it would never be able to locate its target, due to the
shift in the Sun’s position. Every 4 minutes will bring a margin of
error of 1 degree, which will reach uncorrectable dimensions over a long
journey.
This presents no problem over short
distances, say over 200 meters (650 feet). A bee flies at an average of
13 kilometers (8 miles) an hour, traveling 216 meters, or 708 feet a
minute.82But what if the target is more than 4 minutes away?
As already said, bees can collect food from an area 10-kilometers (6.2 miles) wide. They must fly for about 45 minutes to cover 10 kilometers.83 During that time, however, the Sun will move some 11 degrees. If the bee follows the direction given by the original dancing bee, then it will be deflected from the food source as the Sun changes position. In returning to the hive, a bee that has traveled a distance of 10 kilometers bears in mind the position of the food source in relation to that of the Sun. Moreover, since this bee is carrying food, it must travel more slowly, at 9 kilometers/hour (5.6 miles/hour).84 That means that during the bee’s return, the Sun will have moved 16.5 degrees. Therefore, the bee’s directions relative to the Sun may possibly be wrong. Add the 16.5-degree discrepancy of the bee performing the dance to the 11-degree margin of error of the bee setting out, and the bee may end up 27.5 degrees away from the food source.
| He to Whom the kingdom of the heavens and the earth belongs. He does not have a son and He has no partner in the Kingdom. He created everything and determined it most exactly. (Surat al-Furqan: 2) |
Moreover, if the bee fails to find any food source after
traveling that distance, she will not have the strength to get back,
because bees only take as much honey as they will use for that distance,
in order to return with more food from their destination. When that
honey is used up, their strength also evaporates. If they’re unable to
reach nectar, they’ll be unable to return from a lack of energy.
Yet in reality, this never happens. For millions of years now, bees
have been understanding the directions given to them by their
sisters-despite the movement of the Sun and the changing angles. Bees
experience no difficulties in finding sources of food, indicating that
they make no mistakes in calculating the angle with respect to the Sun.
To express this in mathematical terms, the bees calculate that the Sun
moves 1 degree every 4 minutes. As a result, they’re able to keep the
food source’s exact location in mind and to “describe” it to other bees.
Other bees calculate the angle according to the changed position of the
Sun, understand those directions given, and locate the food source in
question.
HOW BEES CALCULATE DISTANCE
Various experiments have been carried out regarding how bees, when they
set off to look for food, take a small quantity of it with them. In one
experiment, bees who found a bowl containing sugar water at a specific
distance returned to the hive (1) and described its location. The first
group of bees who set out brought food back from the source.
Then the scientists conducting the experiment placed the bowl
slightly farther away. The second group to arrive were unable to find
food at the location indicated, and were unable to return from a lack of
energy (2). They were able to find the strength to set out only by
reinforcement with sugar water and honey (3-4). The reason why bees take
only enough food to permit them to reach the source is so that they can
carry more pollen and nectar on their return.Moody Science Classic, City of the Bees, Moody Video: A Ministry of Moody Bible Institute, 820 N. LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60610-3284.
A careful re-reading of the preceding paragraph will
show the extraordinary nature of these directions given by bees. It will
be useful to consider those words not with their usual familiarity, but
one by one, imagining what is being described, and using our reason,
logic and conscience. Very few people are even aware of exactly how much
the position of the Sun changes in how many minutes. Yet bees, as if
they were conscious of all this, perform a precisely accurate
mathematical calculation, accurate to the minute and even to the second.
Is it at all possible for a bee to perform, of its own volition, such a
calculation, which even a human who’s not an expert on the subject
could not manage? Of course not! That ability has been given to bees by
God. To claim otherwise would violate all the rules of reason and logic.
Someone who maintains that bees learned such a calculation by
themselves during some alleged “process of evolution” must also claim
that in hundreds of years’ time, again through that same process, bees
will be able to solve equations better than even the best-skilled
academics. No one could possibly make such a claim, and we would have
grave doubts about the sanity of anyone who did.
How Did Bees Learn to Calculate?As we have seen so far, bees calculate in various different ways and use the Sun in doing so. It is quite impossible for an insect to know about the movements of the Earth and Sun, to know the consequences, and act accordingly. It’s out of the question for bees to be getting these calculations right every time by sheer chance. Nevertheless, all scientists who have researched the subject agree that bees have indeed been performing these calculations with complete accuracy for millions of years.
Unless someone has received the appropriate training, if he gets lost, he’ll need some equipment such as a compass to find his way. It is almost impossible for him to find his way by calculating the exact position of the Sun. Yet despite the Sun being in constant motion, a bee can describe the site it’s visited, in a flawlessly correct manner, to other bees in the hive.
How could these extraordinary abilities have come about? How did bees learn to perform these calculations?
First, bees must have possessed an ability to find their way and to give directions to other bees, ever since the moment they first appeared on Earth. This ability is essential if they are to meet their needs for food and shelter-and thus, for their very survival.
It is impossible for this ability to have developed over time by means of various changes, as evolutionists would have us believe. Indeed, scientists supporting the theory of evolution find themselves faced with the very difficult question of how bees’ communication abilities came into existence. Richard Dawkins, one of the leading contemporary evolutionists, is clearly “bewildered” by the question of the evolution of the bee dance, but attempts to provide an answer in these faltering terms:
The suggestion is that . . . . Perhaps the dance is a kind of . . . . It is not difficult to imagine . . . . Nobody knows why this happens, but it does . . . . It probably provided the necessary . . . . We have found a plausible series of graded intermediates by which the modern bee dance could have been evolved from simpler beginnings. The story as I have told it . . . . may not be the right one. But something a bit like it surely did happen.85
As can be seen from Dawkins’ faulty logic in reply to this question, it can only be fantasy to talk about the bee dance in terms of “chance” and “transition.”
Making use of the Sun to calculate angles is an ability that cannot be acquired by chance. However, it’s not enough for bees to learn to dance or to be able to calculate angles; they also need the other bees to be able to understand them. Bearing this in mind, you can see how totally nonsensical it would be to think in terms of “chance.” No matter how long one might wait, it’s quite impossible for any creature to form such a calculating ability of its own accord.
The bee is a creature with no capacity for thought. Nevertheless, as we have seen throughout, its every action reveals an incomparable intelligence and consciousness. As with every aspect of the universe, this intelligence and consciousness that manifest themselves in bees actually belong to God, the flawless Creator of all.
The Bees’ Eye
When scientists realized that bees make use of the Sun, they began researching how they find their way. First of all, the bee’s eye was examined, and was found to possess a structure that allows these calculations to be performed.
The worker bee’s eye is a very complex organ with 6,900
facets, known as ommatidia, each carrying out separate visual processes.
Each one of these acts like an individual eye, and they stand aligned
together, rather like straws in a bucket. Each one ends in a small,
convex, transparent lens.86 These
lenses form the outer, glassy and oval-shaped surface of the eye. As
well as the two compound eyes on either side of their head, a bee also
has three simple eyes atop its head. It’s estimated that these latter
three are used to measure the strength of the light. The bee’s eye is
superior to the human eye in two respects: it can see ultraviolet light
and perceive the plane of light polarization.87
These are the features that let bees determine the location and
angles of the Sun. Thanks to them, they’re able to correct the
directions they give to other hive members and find their targets
without error as the Sun moves through the sky.
Flower-Marking Methods
Before the foraging bees return
to the hive, they deposit a special scent on their food source. Every
worker has a scent gland in its body, which it can use at will. This
gland, which is located at the rear of the bee, under normal
circumstances is invisible from the outside. The bee can expose this
gland when it so chooses, and spreads the gland’s scent over the flower
it lands on and its surroundings. This scent resembles the aroma of the
Melissa plant and can easily be perceived by human beings. Bees are
especially sensitive to the odor of bees from their own hives, and can
detect it even from considerable distances.88
Thanks to the way in which bees mark flowers, other bees can
recognize that most of the nectar has been drawn from a particular
flower as soon as they land on it, and they immediately fly off again,
and thus avoid wasting time and energy.Flower Fertilization and Bees
If you watch bees gathering food in a field full of
various flowers, something very interesting may catch your attention. A
bee always moves between flowers of one particular species. It pays no
attention to other kinds of flower as it flies from one to another.
Bees sometimes spend days visiting flowers of the same species, which
behavior benefits both them and the flowers. A bee that lands on a
flower for the first time and is unfamiliar with that flower’s structure
must spend a considerable time in order to find a single drop of
nectar. But after landing on the same kind of flower five or six times,
the bee begins to gain speed and competence, since it is able to attain
its aim more easily.This also benefits the flowers, because bees’ preference for a single species permits rapid and efficient fertilization. Pollen from one flower cannot fertilize other species, and flowers are fertilized only by the bees traveling between the members of the same species. Bees make use of scent in order to find flowers of the same species. At this point, it will be useful to touch on the subject of how fertilization takes place. As we know, bees visit flowers to collect both pollen and nectar, but in gathering pollen, they perform a vital function for the flowers: fertilization. In order to produce seeds, a flower’s female reproductive organ has to unite with male gametes, enclosed in pollen grains. In other words, a quantity of pollen must unite with the stigma-the sticky tip of the female organ. Flowers are generally unable to transport pollen in their male stamens onto their own stigmas. The requisite union takes place thanks to insects, thus forming the seeds that will form new plants and new flowers.89
As we have seen, there is a very close connection
between flowers and bees. Both have been created by God to complement
one another. For example, flowers, which need to be fertilized by
insects, produce nectar which will attract insects to them, and it is
this which also attracts bees. Furthermore, flowers also attract insects
by means of their scents or bright colors.
This relationship between bees and flowers is also exceedingly important
for us humans, because beekeeping is of great importance to
agriculture. A great many fruit trees and crops are fertilized by bees
to a large extent. For that reason, some experts regard bees’
contribution in this regard as more important than their production of
honey. In the light of this, the verses in Surat an-Nahl about honeybees
immediately come to mind, in which God reveals the way in which bees
eat from all fruits:
Your Lord revealed to the bees: “Build dwellings in the mountains and
the trees, and also in the structures which men erect. Then eat from
every kind of fruit and travel the paths of your Lord, which have been
made easy for you to follow.” From inside them comes a drink of varying
colors, containing healing for humanity. There is certainly a sign in
that for people who reflect. (Surat an-Nahl: 68-69)Other insects as well as bees fertilize flowers. Yet because of their large numbers, industriousness and the suitability of their bodies, bees can carry relatively greater amounts of pollen than other insects. A large part of agriculture depends on the pollination carried out by bees; indeed, some 80% of insect pollination is the work of bees. Did that pollination fail to take place, there would be a major reduction in the amount of fruit and vegetables produced.
Harmony Between Bees and Flowers
Though bees play a most
important role in flower fertilization, there are some flowers that they
cannot pollinate. For example, since bees cannot distinguish the color
red, they are unable to seek out-and pollinate- red flowers. Some
all-red flowers, such as sweet bay, red carnations and wild flax, are
pollinated by other insects. Besides their colors, these species of
flower have other characteristics that also prevent their being
pollinated by bees. These species’ nectar lies deep down in the flower.
Insects seeking to pollinate these flowers must possess special organs
in order to reach these flowers’ internal regions. And of course, these
insects must also be able to see the color red. In other words, the
insects that will pollinate these flowers need to possess both a special
organ to allow them to reach down into the depths of the flower, and
eyes that can perceive the color red. In nature, only two species of
insect can perceive the color red-wasps and butterflies, and moreover,
both these insects possess a long proboscis with which they can reach
down into the deepest parts of the flower.90
It’s of course meaningless to try to account for such harmony in
terms of blind chance. No random coincidence can give two different
species of living thing physical properties so mutually compatible. This
harmony proves that both were created by a single Creator: God created
both to be mutually compatible.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
72. Alex Hawes, “What the Buzz is All About,” Zoogoer,
September-October 1995,
http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Publications/ZooGoer/1995/6/buzzabout.cfm
 73. Karl von Frisch, Arilarin Hayati (The Life of Bees), pp.135-136  74. Mark L. Winston, The Biology of the Honey Bee, p.152  75. Adam Frank, “Quantum honeybees,” Discover , Nov. 97, p.80  76. Mark L. Winston, The Biology of the Honey Bee, p.156  77. Ibid., pp.154-156  78. Marian Stamp Dawkins, Through Our Eyes Only? The search for animal consciousness, W.H. Freeman Spektrum, pp.89-90  79. Ibid., p.89  80. Ibid., p.90  81. Mark L. Winston, The Biology of the Honey Bee, pp.163-164  82. Ali Demirsoy, Yasamin Temel Kurallari, Omurgasizlar/Bocekler (The Basic Rules of Life, Invertebrates/Insects), Entomology Vol. II / Part II, p.66  83. Mark L. Winston, The Biology of the Honey Bee, p.171  84. Ali Demirsoy, Yasamin Temel Kurallari, Omurgasizlar/Bocekler (The Basic Rules of Life, Invertebrates/Insects), Entomology Vol. II / Part II, p.66  85. http://www.origins.org/articles/bohlin_ upariver.html  86. Mark L. Winston, The Biology of the Honey Bee, p.15  87. Encyclopedia Americana, 1993, p.439  88. Karl von Frisch, Arilarin Hayati (The Life of Bees), p.143  89. Ibid., pp.39-41  90. Ibid., p.31  | |||||||||||||||||||||||
