THE HONEY CRISIS
Bible Study / Daily Devotional
Daily Devotions
Average reading time is about 6 minutes
AN AMAZING FACT: To produce about 1 pound of honey, bees must make 25,000 trips between their hive and the flowers from which they gather precious nectar. Furthermore, that same pound of honey contains the essence of about two million flowers! In the process of making this honey, bees provide a crucial service to nature—pollination. Albert Einstein once remarked that “If bees were to disappear, man would only have a few years to live.” This statement is especially sobering when you consider the recent decimating plague among U.S. bee colonies called colony collapse disorder (CCD).
Just before the beginning of 2007, beekeepers from all over North America began reporting colonies of their bees dying off in unprecedented numbers. Twenty-four U.S. states reported honeybees vanishing at an alarming rate, leaving beekeepers struggling for survival and farmers worried about pollination of their crops. The mysterious disappearance of bees ranges from 30 to 70 percent in some states. Blooming orchards that used to roar with buzzing bees are now strangely silent. One California beekeeper said, “I have never seen anything like it. Box after box after box is just empty. There’s nobody home.”

Experts are exploring several theories to explain the losses from CCD. These include viruses, mites, pesticide contamination and, strangely enough, poor bee nutrition. The mysterious colony collapse disorder highlights the fundamental role that honeybees play in the natural chain of God’s economy, providing fruit and vegetables. Honeybee pollination contributes more than $14 billion worth of North American harvests each year.

A broad assortment of crops like apples, peaches, avocados, soybeans, pears, pumpkins, cucumbers, cherries, kiwis, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, and many more, depend on honey bee pollination. Some have suggested that if all honeybees suddenly died off, it would bring their vital work of pollination to an end. This environmental breakdown could easily cause an agricultural and economic chain reaction leading to a financial collapse and possibly a national famine.

Who would have guessed the work of these little creatures was so important! Maybe that’s why the Bible has so much to say about honey! David writes about God’s law: “How sweet are Your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Psalm 119:103). And Solomon says, “Pleasant words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the bones” (Proverbs 16:24).
KEY BIBLE TEXTS
And the men of the city said unto him on the seventh day before the sun went down, What is sweeter than honey? And what is stronger than a lion? and he said unto them, If ye had not plowed with my heifer, ye had not found out my riddle. Judges 14:18

THE HAMMER ORCHID
Bible Study / Daily Devotional
Daily Devotions
Average reading time is about 6 minutes
AN AMAZING FACT: Most plants and flowers must pollinate to survive, so the Lord has devised many ingenious ways to help them exchange these particles of life. God has created many flower species that pretend to have food that insects want, emitting the scents of things like coconut or even rotting meat to attract them.

Some orchids, however, to achieve pollination, appear to offer insects the promise of marriage. Parts of the flower have been designed to resemble the female versions of certain insects, and the imitation is often astounding. Take, for example, the Australian hammer orchid which has taken advantage of a mating ritual of the Thynnid wasp.

The lower lip of the hammer orchid’s flower mimics the female wasp resting on a twig, looking upward, waiting for a male flying by to spot her. Even to the human eye, it almost perfectly resembles the plump, wingless female Thynnid wasp, complete with a shiny head and furry body. The orchid even releases an enticing female wasp pheromone. That’s a chemical copy of the same sexy perfume the female wasp wears when she’s ready for marriage. Amazing! Poised at the end of an arm just above this alluring decoy are sticky bags filled with pollen.

A male Thynnid wasp flying by, lured by the imitation scent, will grab the decoy and try to fly off with “her” in his grasp. As he takes off, however, his momentum flips him and his flowery pretender up and over, right into the sticky pollen sacks. After realizing his mistake, he releases the decoy—and flies off, only to be fooled again by another hammer orchid, which he now pollinates with the pollen he picked up on his previous bad date. In the process, the wasp transfers pollen from flower to flower.

When real female Thynnid wasps are around, males will invariably choose a live one over the impostor. For this reason God conveniently designed these orchids to bloom in the brief period several weeks before female wasps emerge from underground, giving the flower a temporary advantage when male wasps are flying but females are not yet available.

Mimicry in nature is truly remarkable, even humorous, but wolves in sheep’s clothes is no laughing matter. Jesus warned us that false prophets will come to deceive us before the Second Coming. They will look like the “real thing,” but to the Christian who has carefully studied the Bible, we may detect and turn away from the lures of the devil.
KEY BIBLE TEXTS
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Matthew 7:15

AMAZING ORCHIDS
Bible Study / Daily Devotional
Daily Devotional
Average reading time is about 5 and a half minutes
AN AMAZING FACT: Orchids are truly amazing flowers! They represent the largest family of flowering plants in the world and come in a kaleidoscope of diversity. There are about 25,000 species of orchids. That’s four times as many species as mammals, and twice as many as birds. Orchids grow on six continents in almost every habitat ranging from deserts to swamps, alpine pastures to polar tundra, but most species are found in the wet tropical forests. If you like vanilla, you actually like orchids. The vanilla stick is simply the fermented and blackened pod of an orchid found in Mexico.

Like many plants, orchids need outside help to pollinate and reproduce. Because few orchids offer nectar or edible pollen, they must resort to a broad array of very creative aromatic, visual, or tactile tricks to attract potential pollinators. Some orchid petals imitate bees or butterflies; other can look like lizards, frogs, or even hummingbirds. Others mimic male bees in flight, hoping to incite territorial combat that will result in pollination.

The flowers may produce attractive odors to lure bees with sweet promise by copying the appearance and scent of nectar-producing flowers, while others, as in the case of a Dracula orchid, attract gnats or flies by producing an array of nasty smells like fungus, rotten meat, or even dirty diapers.

Some orchids promise shelter, with petals in the shape of insect burrows. The bugs crawl in for protection and come out with pollen. Certain orchids accomplish pollination by mimicking the appearance, scent, and even the feel of a particular female bee. When a male bee jostles the orchid’s column, two yellow sacs packed with pollen are stuck to his back with quick-drying glue. Then there’s the catasetum (kat-uh-see-tum) orchids, which slingshot a sticky pollen-loaded bundle on any hapless insect that bumps the trigger.

Obviously, these flowers don’t see or hear, and they’re unaware of their own colors and patterns. Mindless flowers could never develop this astounding arsenal of pollinating methods by themselves. It took the hand of an intelligent Creator-God who loves and cares for all of His creations. In the words of Psalm 104:24: “O Lord, how manifold are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all.”
KEY BIBLE TEXTS
Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Luke 12:27