Photo ©2023 by Shelley Schurch
Commentary ©2023 by Maylan Schurch
Friday and Sabbath, September 8 and 9, 2023
Exactly a month ago Shelley and I were pausing—as we always do—beside the front yard of a neighbor three or four blocks from where we live. This neighbor and his family have devoted their entire front yard, including the grassy area on the other side of their driveway, to flowers.
Most of these flower plants grow to three to five feet tall. This makes it perfect for studying and photographing (this photo is one Shelley took that day) my favorite insect, the bee. I don’t know the name of this flower (Shelley does), but there were maybe forty or fifty of them, and the bees were hovering here and there.
As I watched them, I discovered that each bee was incredibly busy. They would land on a flower, and their whole body would gather around whatever pollen was there, and a few seconds later they would fly to another flower and start the same process all over gain.
And it was sweet to watch what they did when they arrived at a flower which already had another bee on it. Bee Two would land beside Bee One, and there would be a bit of hobnobbing as Two tried to decide if there was pollen enough for both. If Bee Two decided there wasn’t, it would be he (or she) which would leave the flower and try for another.
Such a massive flower garden attracted several sizes and colors of bees—big black-and-yellow ones, medium-size ones like in the photo above, and then some really tiny golden little bees. But though I am not a bee expert, and though I haven’t studied this flower garden for more than a few minutes a day, I did not see a single fight between bees of the same or a different kind. They were simply working as hard as they were able, to gather in the pollen, doing their job faithfully and amiably.
Bees are mentioned in the Bible, but don’t seem to be praised for their hard work the way ants are. However, they can provide many lessons about the workplace. Check out this link for several verses about work.