Can you still keep up with the bees?

Originally posted January 28, 2009 – by Andre Piet

“Beekeepers need help,” headlines today’s Nederlands Dagblad. The story has been circulating for quite some time that the honeybee is doing poorly in the Netherlands. There is talk of mass mortality among bee colonies, called colony collapse disorder.

The researchers can only mention a ‘multitude of possible causes’ of the problem, but ‘there is still insufficient information to make a clear diagnosis and offer solutions,’ they write in the report.

A typical phenomenon, if you ask me. The bee stands for the Word. In Hebrew the word for ‘word’ is ‘dabar’, but it is also the word for ‘male bee’. Our Dutch word ‘dar’ (drone) is easily recognizable in it. The feminine form of ‘dabar’ is ‘deborah’, thus a female bee. And just as the bee produces honey, so the ‘end product’ of the Word of God is Scripture. It therefore does not surprise that Scripture is more than once compared to honey (“sweeter than honey”; Psalm 19).

In any case, the most important pollinator is becoming rare in the Netherlands and therefore an “irreversible reduction of biodiversity” is threatening. Involuntarily I then think of 1 Samuel 3:1:

… in those days the Word (dabar!) of the LORD was rare…

Beekeeping is plagued by parasites such as the varroa mite (Varroa destructor…). Also so characteristic! The places that have traditionally been known to concern themselves with ‘dabar and honey’ are infested with parasites that are deadly. Tradition is the foremost parasite. In its wake it always brings along higher criticism and the questioning of what “is written.” As true parasites they indeed live off the Word (i.e., they derive their right of existence from it), but they are by definition destructors…

The group of beekeepers is aging and becoming smaller and smaller.

As if I were opening the page ‘church news’…

Most beekeepers are hobbyists.

Goedbericht.nl is also such a ‘beekeeper’. Purely out of love for the ‘bee’ and in order to provide everyone who is interested with what “is sweeter than honey”! In part due to the many struggling ‘beekeeping operations’ in our country, there is plenty of work to be done…

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see also: dar (drone) and dabar

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