Bee Bread
Bees cannot live on honey alone. While nectar and honey provide a source of energy in the form of sugars, bees also need proteins to function correctly. Amino acids come into the bees’ diet through pollen. In nectar-producing flowers, bees pick up pollen all in a day’s work as they rub against the stamen and anther in most cone-shaped flowers. While the flower benefits from the bee pollenating it so it can produce seeds, the bees also bring home a harvest of this unusual substance. Some flowers produce little or no nectar yet give lots of pollen which the bees harvest directly. They use this product for their own nutrition and in the creation of wax, propolis, royal jelly, and baby food for the developing bees.
Commercial beekeepers have often placed beehives in the middle of acres and acres of a certain species of flowering plant which would produce much nectar-rich material for honey. Later, however, the bees become nutrient deficient and die or have to depend on man-made supplements to survive. The colony needs a wide variety of pollen, not just nectar, to survive. Some pollen has higher protein content. Other pollen has more minerals and other nutrients. The healthiest, long-term survivors are bees in mountainous regions where local wildflowers and other blooming plants have not been disturbed. Cultivated areas often concentrate on a few varieties of plants but leave the bees little option to get all their nutritional needs met. The most important thing for a colony is that they have variety and a continual array of pollen- and nectar-producing plants rather than a mono-crop which only meets one need.
May we also say, “How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Psalm 119:103). God’s Word is our source of life; however, we need all the wide variety He offers. Too many believers have only a monoculture for their spiritual development. Perhaps a man gets caught up in reading Proverbs and continually goes to that source for nourishment. However, after time, he will grow weak and not find God’s Word meeting all his needs because he is becoming starved in vital nutrients he needs from other passages of scripture. A woman might get caught up in certain passages in Psalms and find it deep and refreshing for a time. However, she will not endure for long, living on only one book or one passage of Scripture. I have watched many friends of mine grow up spiritually starved because the only diet they lived on was Acts 2:38 or something similar and they never got into ruminating on the many other great portions of Scripture.
We should be continually cultivating and pursuing variety with the Lord. We must be praying—drinking in the nectar of the Spirit. However, we should not only worship, we must also intercede. We should not spend all our time praying for others, we should also give thanks for them. We should not just thank the Lord for what He has done, but we should also worship Him for who He is. We cannot spend all our time with the Lord just in worship, we also need to admit our weaknesses and call upon Him for His help. We cannot just talk to God about our problems; we must also submit ourselves to His will and let Him have His way in our decisions.
We must be diverse in our approach to God’s Word. We need to memorize verses from Genesis, Deuteronomy, Proverbs, the Gospels, Acts, and the Epistles. We need to read through the Bible regularly to get a broad scope in our biblical diet. Bible reading schedules that keep a person in the Old Testament stories, the poetry books, the gospels, and the epistles are a good, balanced approach. We never want to forget the teachings of Jesus or His life of miracles. At the same time, we cannot avoid the writings of the apostles on how to live this faith in Christ. Meanwhile, let’s not forget where we came from or how God has worked with His people in history. Variety in our spiritual diets makes us strong in the Lord.