It’s a curiosity, to say the least. And it comes the same week as we note an article on a science site about research indicating insects have a form of consciousness.
Anyway, the story is this:
Ten years ago, near Athens, Greece, a devout beekeeper named Isidoros Ţiminis thought to place an icon of the Crucifixion of the Lord in one of his hives. “Soon thereafter, when he opened the hive, he was amazed that the bees showed respect and devotion to the icon, having ’embroidered’ it in wax, yet leaving uncovered the face and body of the Lord,” writes a Greek Orthodox monk.
“Since then, every spring, he puts into the hives icons of the Savior, the Virgin Mary and the Saints, and the result is always the same.”
And no: it’s not just that paint keeps them from building on the images. “Once I brought a handmade icon from a convent, that represented Golgotha with three crosses,” says the monk, who goes by the name Simon. “Bees ’embroidered’ with wax the entire surface of the composition, leaving one to clearly perceive the Cross of Christ and the Thief at His right hand while the thief on the left Cross was covered with a thick layer of wax.”
That begins to seem like more than just happenstance.
Asked a website called Aleteia, “Could it simply be a phenomenon related to some effect in the painting itself, which might prevent bees from building their honeycombs on them? In any case, the work of these peculiar Greek bees remains interest-worthy.”
Interest-worthy to say the least.
“Last time I went, we put in an icon of St. Stephen the Proto-Martyr and Archdeacon, whose name our humble publishing company bears. As you can see from the picture that we publish here, the entire icon is clothed in beeswax–leaving uncovered his face and body.”
Meanwhile, in 2022, researchers at the Bee Sensory and Behavioral Ecology Lab at Queen Mary University of London observed bumblebees doing something remarkable: “The diminutive, fuzzy creatures were engaging in activity that could only be described as play,” reported Quanta Magazine. “Given small wooden balls, the bees pushed them around and rotated them. The behavior had no obvious connection to mating or survival, nor was it rewarded by the scientists. It was, apparently, just for fun. The study on playful bees is part of a body of research that a group of prominent scholars of animal minds cited today, buttressing a new declaration that extends scientific support for consciousness to a wider suite of animals than has been formally acknowledged before.”
Oh, the surprises that will come upon passage from this earth, when we learn life’s mysteries, looking from the other side.
Anyway:
Each spring, Ţiminis places icons of Christ, the Blessed Mother, and various saints in his hives in order to bless his bees and his yearly honey production. That you can view here.