Bees!

Last Sunday, Patti wanted to trim back some bushes in the back yard. Before she started chopping, however, she noticed a whole lot of big insects flying around, so she had me go take a look. These bad boys were really BIG! They were fuzzy and orange and had faint dark stripes. They were all in the air… all in constant motion; held aloft by furiously buzzing wings that seemed ridiculously undersized to the proportions of their big, fat bodies. It was hard to get a good look at any one of them, even though there were hundreds cruising about, as they were franticly zipping about exploring every inch of our garden. And I must admit… with so many of them, and with each one sounding much like an approaching B-17 bomber, we were not too keen on provoking them. Though we don’t normally see bumblebees in our yard, and these menacing interlopers were much bigger than the normal bumblebees I had seen before, and they didn’t look much like the traditional picture of what I thought a bumblebee looked like (see picture), we both thought that they MIGHT be bumblebees. The prudent course of action was to withdraw to the safety of the house, and search the internet to determine just what kind of visitors had descended on our garden.

It turns out that there are over 50 species of bumblebee in North America, and the swarm in our yard was either a variety of Bombus, or more likely… the Valley Carpenter Bee. Not being a trained entomologist, the best I could hope to do was pin it down to the insect family Apidae, order Hymenoptera; Bees! LOL!!! It didn’t seem like a particularly big swarm, so we thought they might be searching for a new home. I really didn’t mind their visit so much… it got me out of having to work in the yard that afternoon. After a couple of days, they moved on (felt like Passover), but the memory of their presence reminded me of the following story I had often heard repeated. I got it off the internet, and it’s not attributed to any author, so I leave it to you to decide on the validity of all of the details of the story.

Why can bumblebees fly?

For years I have often heard people say that bumblebees should not be able to fly. Unfortunately, no one seems to have told the bumblebees this as they still fly around unaware of the fact that they are 'aerodynamically incompatible with flight'.

So let’s think about it rationally, is the bumblebee too stupid to realize it can't actually fly or are the original mathematical calculations that came up with this theory of non-flight flawed?

Let's go back to where this whole thing started. There was this Swiss aerodynamicist, while at a posh dinner, who got talking to a biologist who started asking about the flight of bees. So the aerodynamicist scribbled the calculation on the back of a napkin but, seeing as he was at a dinner party (and therefore possibly on the tipsy side and uninterested in talking shop), he simplified it. He assumed that bees have a smooth, rigid wing, like the wing of an airplane, and he had to guess the weight and wing area of Mr. Bee. Shockingly, the calculations suggested that the bee generated insufficient lift to be able to fly, but the aerodynamicist had had enough by this point and went back to getting drunk (OK, I might have just made up that drunk part).

However, the story spread and unfortunately wasn't taken as a lesson that a mathematical model of something is not the same as the real thing. Anyone who played with a dead bumblebee as a kid (was that just me?) will have noticed that their wings are nothing like the wings of a plane. Instead, they are not rigid and they bend and twist during flight. In reality, the beating bee's wings have more similarity with a helicopter rotor than an airplane wing.

A recent model of how rapid oscillations, like those created by a bee flapping it's wings 130 times a second, affect the air around them have in fact shown that bumblebees can fly. Insects appear to fly in a sea of vortexes moving against the main current of the air. I'm sure the bees will be glad to know that they don't defy the laws of nature after all.

So, in fact no one ever proved that a bumblebee can't fly. They simply illustrated that a simple mathematical model is not appropriate for describing the bumblebee's flight. However, the myth that a bumblebee can't fly is still flying around, unaware that it, unlike Mr. Bee, is the one that is wrong.

In high school and college, “the bumblebee can’t fly” story was often held up as proof of the dangers of applying a mathematical model without a complete understanding of the variables and forces at work on any hypothetical situation. I submit to you that Christians are often guilty of applying the wrong model to our lives, and to our congregations. As Christians, we either convince ourselves, or let the world convince us that we are bumblebees that cannot fly… even though God has promised us in Jeremiah 29:11-13…

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”

Paul reminds us in 4:13 of his letter to the Philippians that when we do what is pleasing to God, there are NO LIMITS on us:

“I can do everything through him that gives me strength.”

Christ gives us the strength to do amazing things… to the glory of God! So, we followers of Jesus are called to stretch our spiritual wings and fly in a sea of the Holy Spirit moving against the main current of life and secular expectations. Seeing how the secular model of the world is not appropriate for describing the power of God’s spiritual realm, we need to depend on the power of God’s Holy Spirit.

The bee is but a tiny piece of God’s glorious creation, yet the humble bee, in its pursuit of nectar, pollinates the crops and increases the harvest. Like the bee, we Christians need to pursue the dreams God put on OUR hearts… and we need to fly with OUR spiritual gifts. Along the way, we’ll have no greater idea of God’s plan than the bee, but God will use us to pollinate for his kingdom, and we’ll increase the harvest, too.

This entry is very late in being posted to the blog this week. My mind has been on Holy Week, and even as Easter approaches, my thoughts just kept flitting around (the bee metaphor seems appropriate here, too). It all seems pretty jumbled to me, but I felt called to write it. I pray that the Holy Spirit somehow helped me to get out of my own way, and that something in this post touches someone to the glory of God.

With Easter only a few days away (as of this writing), I encourage you with the Easter greeting/response that is appropriate on any day, as much as it is on Easter:

“Christ has risen. He has risen, indeed!”

Your brother in Christ,

Dave