Bees & the Evidence of a Greater Reality

The common honey bee is really not so common. Indeed, nothing in this world is as ordinary as it seems. The philosopher Alan Watts once said that to be astounded by the most ordinary aspects of creation is actually a subtle form of enlightenment. When I contemplate the miraculous lives of honey bees, this is the feeling I sometimes get.

For example, bee researchers tell us that honey bees are actually able to manipulate their own physical aging process -- both forward and backward. As you know, bees live in highly structured communities where there exists a strict division of labor. There are worker bees, drones, nursery workers, scouts, a single queen and more.

In order for a hive to run properly, there must be sufficient numbers of bees in each division of labor. For example, it is the task of very young bees to care for the new-born larvae. Older, more mature bees take flight to explore the countryside for pollen, which they bring back to the hive -- where yet another set of bees manufacture the raw pollen into honey.

But if a shortage occurs among the older, foraging bees, an amazing thing happens. A number of the younger bees will age very rapidly, becoming mature enough in just one day, rather than the normal three weeks, and so take flight to search for pollen. If the opposite occurs, the older bees can actually reverse their aging. They
physically become young bees again and take over domestic duties in the hive.

Bees seem to have a special ability to control the very aging processes of their own physical bodies. If that is not amazing enough, some scientists now suspect that bees actually have the ability to comprehend more than the normal three dimensions of our world. Bees, in fact, seem able to experience their world in at least six dimensions.

Barbara Shipman is a mathematician at the University of Rochester, but her father was a bee researcher for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Shipman would often stop by her father's office and he would show her the amazing world of honey bees. One aspect of bee behavior which has fascinated and baffled scientists for more than 70 years is the mysterious dances they perform in their hives. The dance -- a kind of crazy wing-waggling jitterbug -- communicates to other bees where new sources of pollen can be found. By watching the dance of a scout bee, other bees, called "recruits" get an exact idea of the direction and distance of where new food can be found.

Shipman's work as a math theorist led her to an area which only a select few other mathematicians were working on -- something called manifolds. A manifold is a geometric shape described by certain complex equations. There are an infinite variety of manifold configurations. They can describe shapes of many dimensions. Shipman was working with a six-dimensional structure called a flag manifold, when suddenly, in one of those thrilling moments of scientific coincidence, she realized that the flag manifold very closely resembled the pattern of the bee waggle dance.

Now, because the flag manifold is a six-dimensional structure, it cannot be perceived in our three-dimensional world. We can visualize only an approximation of what it looks like by projecting its "shadow" into two dimensional space. The shadow of an ordinary sphere, for example, projects onto two dimensions as a flat circle. And when you project a six-dimensional flag manifold onto two dimensions, it matches exactly the patterns which dancing bees make. But two-dimensional bee-dance patterns are not enough to explain how bees interpret these patterns to locate distant sources of food. A good explanation may be that bees actually perceive all six dimensions. In order to do that, the eyes or some other senses of the bee would need to be able to see subatomic activity directly! When a human scientist tries to detect a quark by bombarding it with another particle in a high-energy accelerator -- the flag manifold is lost. If bees are using quarks as a script for their dance, they must be able to observe the quarks in their natural states.

So, the world of the common honey bee appears to be not as simple as it seems at first glance. Oblivious to the three-dimensional limitations we so-called superior human beings enforce upon our world, the honey bees go about their daily business -- manipulating their own physical bodies at will, and also plying the multidimensional doorways of the mysterious quantum world. Bees may be living proof that higher dimensions or realities exist physically, and not just in theory. It also suggests that there may be doorways
for entering into those realities.

I find this nothing less than inspirational, and a source of hope. As human beings and as creatures with the most powerful intellects on the planet, being shown just a tiny crack in a doorway is all we need to make a start at opening that door wide enough for us to step through into a more wondrous and miraculous world.

Very often, the pathways to the miraculous are hidden right before our very eyes. The next time you think your normal three-dimensional world is bland and ordinary, think of the amazing honey bee. A bee is not limited by preconceived notions or hardened views of a learned reality that tells us too often that "what we see is what we get."

There is so much more to our world than we can imagine, so much yet to discover, so many sparkling opportunities ahead of us. Right now, swirling all around you, are vast realities of unexplored dimensions and space. Hidden within the anatomy and biochemistry of the honey bee may even be the secret of reversing the aging process.

We have so much to learn, so much to explore, and a future that promises to be bright with yet undiscovered wonders. If you don't believe it, lie down in the grass on a warm summer day and contemplate the life of the honey bee -- let your mind wander free into new dimensions of thought -- there is not telling where you will end up.

compliments of The Church of Humanity