Learning from Bees

One synchronicity I failed to write about was about bees.

I recently read the novel, The Secret Life of Bees, which is fantastic!  Yes, it's the book that they based the Dakota Fanning movie on.  And then general conference happened at the beginning of October and Ballard spoke about how bees work together and what it means to us, if we tried to apply them to the way we live.  He even talked about the health benefits of honey, which is something mentioned many times in the novel I had just read. :)

I was just taken in completely by his talk as he related it to our lives.  Bees are such intriguing creatures in the way they work so hard and keep helping each other.  The novel mentioned often about the gender roles of bees because it's a book that focuses quite a lot on the feminine, as well as race issues, of course.  But Ballard also talked about the amount of work it takes to make one pound of honey.  How much?  Going to check?

I'll wait....
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Got it?

Yeah, that's right!  A hive of 20,000 to 60,000 bees must travel about the equivalent of two times around the world, visiting millions of flowers!  And this is done all the time!  I mean, how many pounds of honey did you see on the shelves at the store today?  It's fascinating!

But even more is the amount of honey that would equal one bee's contribution.  Did you see it?  That's right... one twelfth of a teaspoon.  One twelfth!  One might think, that's so miniscule it would be easy to give up and say it wouldn't make that much difference.  But bees never do that.  Each bee always makes their contribution to the best of their ability.  Maybe it's instinct or something, but we have a lesson to learn from them.  Maybe I should remember that even if the difference I make is a small one, if we can all work together in a common goal, we can do huge things.

I admired the bees represented in the novel I was reading and how they symbolically played a part in the entire novel.  The writing was genius!  It's a novel I'm glad I own now because I would want to read it again and again because of the way it uses language and makes you think about life.

I think there has to be more for me to learn from this synchronicity, and I'll keep watching out for it.