The Divine Honey Bee

The simple honey bee.  Actually, strike that. The complex, amazing, almost magical, medium-sized insect: the honey bee.  The average honey bee is female, asexual, producer of remarkable, useful products, who lives an adult life of approximately 60 hard working days. It's hard not to respect her work ethic and dedication, all wrapped up in a brain the size of a sesame seed.

She doesn't live for herself, but for the colony; and she doesn't hesitate to sacrifice her life in protection of her hive (her sting rips out her innards once her barbed stinger is sunk into the flesh of a threatening critter, including intrusive bee keepers. Think tiny Kamikaze fighter).  Worker bees emerge from fertilized eggs (yet they themselves are infertile), and are briefly fed royal jelly to develop them into the Amazons they become.

Recently I had the privilege of donning my own brand new bee suit to assist my seasoned beekeeper husband as we harvested gallons of beautiful, liquid gold, along with comb and wax.  I did get stung, and it hurt, swelled, itched, and I whined about it for a few days, while my husband ignored his multiple hand stings and probably whispered, "weenie."  I still persisted in helping the trapped live workers in escaping our bee house by brushing them out open windows doors.  Bless their dinky hearts.

My main job was using the blower on the box of frames to attempt to remove stubbornly clinging bees before Brad carried them into the honey house. In true rookie fashion, I freaked out when a longer-abdomen bee crawled out of a frame, positive we had removed the queen. Nope, it was a drone. Whew!  The queen is the penultimate bee, without her, there wouldn't be any worker bees, thus no honey.  She is pampered and protected, but out of necessity, as she lays all the good eggs, in great quantities. She lives about 7 years, but only lays eggs for about 4 of those years (up to like 7,000,000, or an egg a minute), at which time she is usually supplanted by a new, younger, stronger queen (either via the hive making the new queen, or when the bee keeper notices that fertilized eggs are declining in the hive, so he/she buys a new queen and introduces it to the hive, hoping the new queen will kill/kick out the old, rather than vice versa. Gratitude is short-lived in the beekeeping world).  Queens don't exactly live lives of leisure either.  Their best days are probably their larval days when they receive extra doses of royal jelly, to make them into fertile queens.

The final member of the honey bee hive family is the drone. Drones are the males, and are produced by unfertilized eggs.  The drones only have one job: to mate with the queen once in her life during her mating flight.  She mates with approximately 10 or 12 males and that gives her the 7 million spermatozoa to last her the rest of her useful life (approximately 4 years).  Drones don't sting, gather, protect, or produce. Their only function is to procreate.  They hatch from unfertilized eggs, maybe about 200 of them each summer, just in case the queen dies and a new queen needs to be fertilized. They do help keep the hive temperature warm during cold seasons, but other than that, they don't have anything to do. Sex usually kills them, as their sex organs normally rip out after mating, and if they don't mate, the just eat, drink and be happy, until they either die, or in cases of low nectar years, are kicked out of the hive to starve, freeze and die.  The life of leisure isn't always pretty. Drones are absolutely necessary, only sporadically so; like once every 4 years, a dozen of them are absolutely critical to the survival and perpetuation of the hive.

Next time: The amazing STUFF the honey bee comes up with!

Sputtering

My husband Brad and I recently added 15 more hives to our bee "farm."  The hives spent the night in the bee shop before Brad set them up the next day.  After work, I drove over to see the set up hives.   and them over to our bee "farm." I duly admired my husband's hard work, and after doing so, took a rest inside our cozy bee shop and began to notice a few straggler bees sputtering against the inside windows trying to escape. Being the soft hearted animal lover, I shooed them out, but they dropped to the ground and did nothing.  Brad informed me that they won't find their hives as they were separated during the transport and were left behind in the garage.  They will just aimlessly sputter around and die, purposeless. I know it's ridiculous to feel sad about them, but I did.  And I began thinking that I have been like one of those sputtering bees these past few years.

I began working full time almost four years ago for the first time since 1991(!), developed a chronic illness, underwent a handful of surgeries, struggled with lots of anxiety and depression, and had my son and his family move overseas.   And while I have much to be thankful for (family, food, shelter, friends, healthcare), the battle drags on and on, some days worse than others.  I have lost touch with the Christian community, simply because I have nothing left for community.  Weekends are spent trying to rest to gear up for the next week of work and to eke out the bare minimum of chores to maintain near chaos.  Hobbies have died. Exercise has gone by the wayside as I'm either too tired, in too much pain, or unable to force myself to do it, though rationally I know it's mandatory for my condition.  I manage a couple days of light pilates and walking and that's about it.  My doc wants part time work for me at the most, but it doesn't exist with sufficient pay and healthcare, so I drag myself from bed another day to repeat an endless, medication-driven, weary loop.

I didn't start this to create sympathy, honestly.  I just need to get real, with myself and the world, as that's how I roll.   I pray daily for a miracle job to fall in my lap-that requires 20 hours a week and pays $50 an hour, plus killer benefits. I beg for Jesus' second coming so I can escape without having to make the hard decisions- for Him to descend and yank me out of my sinkhole.

I still have good, productive days, but my full time stressful management job is essentially "ruining" my life. It is the only activity that I can regularly manage and as such the rest of my life has fallen to dust. I just can't live like this anymore. I neglect time with Jesus, with the Church (other believers), close friends and family. I have aging parents I need to visit and maintain connection with; they will not be here forever and I can't handle missing out on the rest of their lives.  I have God-given gifts in storage for when I'm all done running this marathon, but guess what?  I don't have the assurance of time after the marathon; I only have today.  I am tired, deeply sad, missing my life-the one that God has given me, in exchange for the life I'm forcing myself to trudge through.  Why did this get so hard?  Maybe it became hard because I have  strayed and Jesus is getting my attention.   Maybe the problem isn't my health issues, but my mindset, the one that insists I have safety and the known familiar rather than the unknown, uncertain circumstance.  I have locked myself into work as I fear the loss of money, freedom and healthcare.  Maybe it's time to say "done" and let it be so, let the chips fall where they may...

I couldn't sleep last night until nearly 3:30 am, so I didn't wake up until almost 10 this morning. As I drank my coffee I turned on the TBN channel for a Sunday sermon and tuned into Jesse Duplantis preach about...FEAR!  How fear paralyzes us and completely blocks the blessings of God.  He read several scriptures, but one smacked me in the middle of the forehead: Psalm 27:1:

      The Lord is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear?

The Lord is the stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid?

As Jesse continued to speak, I received "light" as illumination of my path, "salvation" as "preservation from loss, ruin or harm" (Google dictionary), and "stronghold" as "fortified protection."  For Jesus knows what I'm made up of. The fragile clay that He loving formed into my shape and person. I'm not living true to my shape, and it's all due to fear.  Fear I'll lose financial independence, status, healthcare, good friends/coworkers that I've met and treasure. Fear of shame and stigma. Fear that if I post a good day's photo of a doable adventure, fear of criticism. Fear my spouse and I will fight about money.  Is this fear enough currency to keep me bound to pain and grief, struggle and stress?

Am I called to my current situation, or am I being forced out of it into my real calling?  I long for peace, serenity, time to pour over the Word and seek the face and heart of Jesus so I can make Him known.  I have become a stressed, task focused, distracted person, who can only look at the pile on my desk and feel cortisol ramp ever higher. i have no time for contemplation, or to notice the eyes of someone hurting and offer them a drink from the well of the Master, and it makes me so sad.  I was made for lengthy times of solitude to hear from Jesus and to proclaim the treasures He reveals.
I was not created to be a money-making machine. I was created to bring forth the glory of the Lord, and when that isn't happening, it's time for soul searching; it's time for change.