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Translated by Bl. Jackson.
St Basil the Great Resources Online and in Print
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80 Pages (Homilies: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
Page 68
4. What a variety, I have said, in the actions and lives of flying creatures. Some of these unreasoning creatures even have a government, if the feature of government is to make the activity of all the individuals centre in one common end. This may be observed in bees. They have a common dwelling place; they fly in the air together, they work at the same work together; and what is still more extraordinary is that they give themselves to these labours under the guidance of a king and superintendent, and that they do not allow themselves to fly to the meadows without seeing if the king is flying at their head. As to this king, it is not election that gives him this authority; ignorance on the part of the people often puts the worst man in power; it is not fate; the blind decisions of fate often give authority to the most unworthy. It is not heredity that places him on the throne; it is only too common to see the children of kings, corrupted by luxury and flattery, living in ignorance of all virtue. It is nature which makes the king of the bees, for nature gives him superior size, beauty, and sweetness of character. He has a sting like the others, but he does not use it to revenge himself. [1657] It is a principle of natural and unwritten law, that those who are raised to high office, ought to be lenient in punishing. Even bees who do not follow the example of their king, repent without delay of their imprudence, since they lose their lives with their sting. Listen, Christians, you to whom it is forbidden to "recompense evil for evil" and commanded "to overcome evil with good." [1658] Take the bee for your model, which constructs its cells without injuring any one and without interfering with the goods of others. It gathers openly wax from the flowers with its mouth, drawing in the honey scattered over them like dew, and injects it into the hollow of its cells. Thus at first honey is liquid; time thickens it and gives it its sweetness. [1659] The book of Proverbs has given the bee the most honourable and the best praise by calling her wise and industrious. [1660] How much activity she exerts in gathering this precious nourishment, by which both kings and men of low degree are brought to health! How great is the art and cunning she displays in the construction of the store houses which are destined to receive the honey! After having spread the wax like a thin membrane, she distributes it in contiguous compartments which, weak though they are, by their number and by their mass, sustain the whole edifice. Each cell in fact holds to the one next to it, and is separated by a thin partition; we thus see two or three galleries of cells built one upon the other. The bee takes care not to make one vast cavity, for fear it might break under the weight of the liquid, and allow it to escape. See how the discoveries of geometry are mere by-works to the wise bee! [1661]
The rows of honey-comb are all hexagonal with equal sides. They do not bear on each other in straight lines, lest the supports should press on empty spaces between and give way; but the angles of the lower hexagons serve as foundations and bases to those which rise above, so as to furnish a sure support to the lower mass, and so that each cell may securely keep the liquid honey. [1662]
[1657] Arist., Hist. An. v. 21, and Plin. xi. 17. "Ecce in re parva, villisque nostra annexa, cujus assidua copia est, non constat inter auctores, rex nullumne solus habeat aculeum, majestate tantum armatus: an dederit eum quidem natura, sed usum ejus illi tantum negaverit. Illud constat imperatorem aculeo non uti."
[1658] Rom. xii. 17, 21.
[1659] The ancient belief was that honey fell from heaven, in the shape of dew, and the bee only gathered it from leaves. So Verg., Ec. iv. 30, "roscida mella," and Georg. iv. 1, "aerii mellis coelestia dona." cf. Arist., H. A. v. 22 meli de to pipton ek tou a& 153;ros, kai malista ton astron anatolais, kai hotan kataskephe he iris, and Plin. xi. 12. "Sive ille est coeli sudor, sive quaedam siderum saliva, sine purgantis se aeris succus,... magnam tamen coelestis naturae voluptatem affert." So Coleridge (Kubla Khan): "For he on honey dew hath fed And drunk the milk of Paradise."
[1660] Prov. vi. 8, lxx. The reference to the bee is not in the Hebrew.
[1661] cf. AElian. v. 13. geometrian de kai kalle schematon kai horaias plaseis auton aneu technes te kai kanonon kai tou kaloumenou hupo ton sophon diabetou, to kalliston schematon hexagonon te kai hexapleuron kai isogonion apodeiknuntai hai melittai.
[1662] The mathematical exactness of the bee is described by Darwin in terms which make it even more marvellous than it appeared to Basil. "The most wonderful of all known instincts, that of the hive bee, may be explained by natural selection having taken advantage of numerous slight modifications of simpler instincts; natural selection having by slow degrees more and more perfectly led the bees to sweep equal spheres at a given distance from each other in a double layer, and to build up and excavate the wax along the planes of intersection." Origin of Species, ii. 255, ed. 1861. According to this view the beings from whom hive bees, as we know them, are descended were gifted with certain simple instincts capable of a kind of hereditary unconscious education, resulting in a complex instinct which constructs with exact precision the hexagonal chamber best fitted for the purpose it is designed to fulfil, and then packs it. And it is interesting to note how the great apostle of abstract selection personifies it as a "taker" of "advantage," and a "leader."
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/basil/hexaemeron.asp?pg=68
