The Resurrection and the Honey Bee
Consultant to the VIRTUS® Programs
The bee is least among winged creatures, but it reaps the choicest of harvests.
Sirach 11: 3
Consider the bee. The work it can accomplish in community is marvelous beyond compare. A beehive consists of anywhere from 20,000 to 250,000 bees, and there are three basic kinds of bees in the colony: the queen, drones, and workers all, working in unison to productively, harmoniously and industrially create honey. This process provides nature an ongoing gift in the form of pollination. It is said that one in every three mouthfuls of food we eat and beverages we drink are the result of pollination by bees. It is no wonder that the Church has long aligned itself with the symbol of the bee and hive. St. Bernard of Clairveaux and St. Ambrose are both patron saints of beekeepers and our Catholic history is laden with its images.
If you have the opportunity to explore the many churches in Rome or get to visit Saint Peter Basilica at the Vatican, you might encounter many such architectural memorials of the bee. The honey bee and hive symbols come in various versions and artistic renderings, but the images are clearly engraved in the edifices of many buildings. A must see is the Bernini Fountain of the Bees (Fontana delle Api) found near the Piazza Barberini which serves as a water source for animals. One of the most interesting places to find the bee is Bernini’s masterful work in Saint Peter’s Basilica on the baldacchino—a 98 foot tall domed canopy made of bronze. At the base of these columns around the main altar in the Basilica Bernini engraved bees buzz around olive branches.
The bee and hive are ancient symbols used by many throughout history in various ways. Most notably: “The bee has been admired for its noble traits by many cultures and therefore has a variety of symbolic meanings. It can be used to represent community, diligence and industry, purity, immortality and resurrection. Its sting may represent judgment. The honey it produces may represent sweetness of character or heavenly riches.”
The addition of the bee last year in the Easter Exsultet perhaps prompted Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI to mention them as well in his homily: “The great hymn of the Exsultet, which the deacon sings at the beginning of the Easter liturgy, points us quite gently towards a further aspect. It reminds us that this object, the candle, has its origin in the work of bees. So the whole of creation plays its part. In the candle, creation becomes a bearer of light. But in the mind of the Fathers, the candle also in some sense contains a silent reference to the Church. The cooperation of the living community of believers in the Church in some way resembles the activity of bees. It builds up the community of light. So the candle serves as a summons to us to become involved in the community of the Church, whose raison d’être is to let the light of Christ shine upon the world.”
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI [who has worn a vestment embroidered with bees] points to the nature of the bee and their work—similar to the work we all share in as members of the Body of Christ employing our gifts, talents, and energies all toward the goal of building up the Church from the most vulnerable to the empowered.
We have much to learn from the honeybee and “scientists have studied [them] extensively, because they are fascinating organisms. Bees have captured mankind’s attention since as early as Aristotle. Not only because they produce honey and honey is the earliest sweetener human beings have found, but because of their industriousness (working to their death), selflessness (producing honey for humans and dying to defend their home), and most importantly, their social organization. Honeybees, like other social insects, show ‘division of labor’ whereby different workers specialize on different tasks. In some sense, the complexity of their society rivals that of our own.”
This Easter, taking our cue from the bee, simple creature of God yet so vitally complex, we strive to share our gifts with all members of the Body of Christ, empowering each other to do the work of Him who sent us with diligence and fervor. In 1948 Pope Pius XII spoke these poignant words to an assembly of Italian beekeepers
“Ah, if men could and would listen to the lesson of the bees: if each one knew how to do his daily duty with order and love at the post assigned to him by Providence; if everyone knew how to enjoy, love, and use in the intimate harmony of the domestic hearth the little treasures accumulated away from home during his working day: if men, with delicacy, and to speak humanly, with elegance, and also, to speak as a Christian, with charity in their dealings with their fellow men, would only profit from the truth and the beauty conceived in their minds, from the nobility and goodness carried about in the intimate depths of their hearts, without offending by indiscretion and stupidity, without soiling the purity of their thought and their love, if they only knew how to assimilate without jealousy and pride the riches acquired by contact with their brothers and to develop them in their turn by reflection and the work of their own minds and hearts; if, in a word, they learned to do by intelligence and wisdom what bees do by instinct—how much better the world would be! Working like bees with order and peace, men would learn to enjoy and have others enjoy the fruit of their labors, the honey and the sweetness and the light in this life here below.
Works Cited:
Symbols in Christian Art & Architecture: A Resource for Learning the Sign Language of the Faith by Walter E. Gast. Taken from the Internet 12 February 2013 http://www.planetgast.net/symbols/.
Homily of His Holiness Benedict XVI, Saint Peter Basilica, Holy Saturday 7 April 2012.
Honey Bee Research. Taken from the Internet 20 February 2013 http://www.cyberbee.net/research.htm.
27 November 1948 Address made by Pope Pius XII to beekeepers on the lessons of bees for mankind.
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