My daughter Moira and I were chatting recently. Music is her native language. She told me an amazing fact—how flowers sing to bees! Let me share it with you. Springtime, after all, is busy bee time.
In the Oct 28, 2022 edition of Smithsonian magazine, Sarah Kuta tells about Ellard Hunting and fellow researchers at a weather station in England. Even though there were no area storms, their instruments showed a growing atmospheric electric charge.
It was honeybees swarming nearby! Believe it or not, “While swarming, western honeybees can produce an atmospheric electric charge density that’s greater than a thunderstorm.”
Bees are vital for our survival, responsible for about half of all crop pollination. It’s long been known they detect flowers by color, shape, and pattern. But bees also utilize electrical charges to find the right flowers for food. How does this happen?
Lightning contacts earth about 100 times each second, or 8 million times a day. Positive charges in the upper clouds flow to the negative charges on earth, sustaining the global atmospheric electric circuit. Even flowers have a small negatively-charged “floral electric field” whose hum the bees detect. Now bees aren’t electrically connected to earth like flowers, but as they fly they acquire a small positive charge. So what happens when the positively-charged bee lands on the negatively-charged flower?
Biologist David Attenborough gives a great explanation on YouTube, titled “How Flowers Talk to Bees.”
He says: “As a bee approaches a flower, the charged fields around the flower and the bee interact…and when it lands, the positive fields and negative fields immediately cancel each other out.…There are two very surprising consequences. “Firstly, the plant’s negatively charged pollen actually jumps across onto the positively-charged bee. “Secondly, the plant has a changed electrical field and, when another bee comes along, it detects this altered electrical signature, and avoids the flower. The plant is, in effect, telling the bee that it has no nectar, and to come back later.”
Oh the wonder of God’s creation! The atheist expresses his astronomical faith in mere happenstance. But if the bee and flower’s interaction is merely accidental, then the atheist himself is also an accident. As are his thoughts and theories.
Darwin agreed. In a letter to William Graham dated July 3, 1881, he wrote, “But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”
Yes, the world shows damage. That authenticates what happened through the Fall when we rebelled against our Maker. But there’s still so much beauty in the universe, it should cause us to wonder and adore.
Here are two glimpses into heaven. In one, believers say, “Worthy are You, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for You created all things.” (Revelation 4:11) But in the next scene, they sing: “Worthy are You…for You were slain, and by Your blood You ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” (Revelation 5:9)
The first creation is amazing. But being part of the new creation? “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17) That’s out of this world.
Article by Jabe Nicholson first published in the Commercial Dispatch, Saturday, April 6, 2024.