The Wonder of Honeybees

When God created our planet Earth, He endowed it with wonderful resources and living things that make life beautiful for man. Resources such as oil, gold and sand. And living things such as bees, fish and livestock. God was such a creative being, wasn't He?

Of all the wonderful living things that God put on Earth for man's benefit, the honeybees are the most amazing. I find it a wonder the way those dainty insects are able to produce sweet honey that leaves us licking our fingers whenever we taste it. And that honey is not only sweet, it also has health benefits for us humans. Health experts tell us that honey contains antioxidants that reduce the risk of getting stroke, heart attacks and some types of cancer.

As useful as honeybees are, they can be nasty because they sting. I remember back in the mid '90s, there was a swarm of bees that used to occasionally invade a bridge near my hometown of Kiserian. And whenever the bees invaded the bridge, they would make it impassable. But some people would outwit the bees by walking across the bridge with their faces covered with a sheet.

One afternoon back in those days, I happened to be heading to Kiserian when I found the bridge full of bees. I must have been a callow little boy given the way I strolled towards the honeybees-invaded bridge. And lo! The honeybees descended on me and stung me mercilessly on my face. When I went back home with a swollen face, Uncle Ndonga teased me that I looked like a boxer.

I heard through the grapevine at my primary school that some farmers got rid of the honeybees that used to invade the bridge by blocking their nests with mud. As to why the farmers did so, considering the benefits of honey from honeybees, is something I don't understand. There ought to have been a wiser way of dealing with the bees.

We were fortunate to have an abundant swarm of honeybees on our farm in the '90s. They had created a nest for themselves in a hollow cave in a certain tree on our land where we used to graze cattle. And I can't recall anyone in my family ever getting stung by them. Our only shortcoming was our lack of skill in bee-farming. When some of my family members harvested honey from bees' nest in an unprofessional way, the bees fled from the tree. To this day, more than twenty years later, the honeybees have never gone back to that tree.

Fortunately, there are some honeybees that have settled on another section of our farm in recent years. This time, my family - led by my senior brother Bob Njinju - are trying to practise bee-farming by harnessing honey from the bees. A few months ago, Bob hired a carpenter to construct five beehives that were placed on that section of the farm where the honeybees are.

Because the bees are yet to occupy the beehives that the carpenter made for them, Bob brought home on last Thursday a type of wax that smells like honey with the intention of using it to attract honeybees to the beehives. He melted the wax and applied it on one beehive for a start. Then he instructed our farmhand to place the beehive on the farm at night to minimize the risk of being stung by bees.

That Thursday night our farmhand took the beehive to the farm, I heard him joke to Mum that people could mistake the beehive he was carrying for a coffin. Hearing him say so made me explode into laughter. Then I added in Swahili, "And people would get scared and run away from you!"

I found that joke so funny that it had me in stitches for the next ten minutes or so. It reminded me of another joke I heard some years back of a thief who stole a coffin one night at Lang'ata Cemetery in Nairobi. When a policeman saw the thief carrying the coffin and confronted him, the thief replied, "I was buried at Lang'ata Cemetery and I didn't like resting there. So I am moving to another place." That reply must have frightened the policeman out of his wits. Or what do you think?

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RECOMMENDATION: If you've enjoyed this story on wonders of honeybees, you might also enjoy another story I wrote sometimes back on "Laughing Like a Little Child". Just click on that link in blue to dive straight into the story.