Some of Your Beeswax!

Have you watched the two-part National Geographic series, Secrets of the Bees. As a "once upon a time" beekeeper I was intrigued and it really is astonishing, particularly the first episode. The team of film-makers worked for three years with the very best of equipment to capture a world unknown to most of us, including the most experienced beekeepers. Even though they focus on the complex society of a honey bee hive they remind us that there roughly 20,000 species and are arguably the most important animal on Earth. They pollinate a third of the food we eat and we might starve without their industry. 

Watching Secrets of the Bees got me searching for the spiritual importance of bees in various cultures and to my surprise I found out that the Christian Easter Vigil Exsultet, the prayer for the worship service the night before Resurrection morning, praises the bees who provide the wax for the large Paschal Candle and therefore the light it provides:

O holy Father, the evening sacrifice of this incense,
which holy Church renders to Thee
by the hands of Thy ministers
in the solemn offering of this wax candle,
made out of the work of bees.

Now also we know the praises of this pillar,
which the shining fire enkindles to the honour of God.
Which fire, although divided into parts,
suffers no loss from its light being borrowed.
For it is nourished by the melting wax,
which the mother bee produced
for the substance of this precious light.

                                           Bee hive design on a Paschal Candle

High praise for the little critters! For several years while in Sudbury a number of  congregations worked together hosting an Easter Vigil service and we used traditional liturgical elements. I don't remember the bees at all and that's because this section was omitted for a time but it is making a comeback in some parishes, deservedly so. 

There is currently an exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum called Bees: A Story of Survival and I think I/we must go:

This visually stunning exhibition – created by the National Museums Liverpool with award-winning sculptor Wolfgang Buttress – tells the remarkable story of bee adaptations and survival, as well as their relationship to humans and the natural world. 

Now I need to find out why when I was a lad we would rebuff a nosy person with the curious phrase: "None of your beeswax!"