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Science and the Bible b y Bolton Davidheiser ^ Chairman, Science Division^ ^ -e.-e.'S ( Biola College
AUTOMATION AMONG THE BEES
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T h e p r o p h e t D a n i e l in writing about the time of the end said that knowledge would be increased. The rapidity with which knowledge has increased in recent times is so ap parent that to mention it seems trite. The divinely instituted laws of na ture have not changed. It is our in creased knowledge and the applica tion of that knowledge that makes the difference between the primitive life of the savage and the marvels of the modem age. The handling of honeybees is an interesting example. The improve ments in the means of obtaining honey and pollinating crops have been accomplished by the accommodation of men to the ways of bees and not vice versa. The first mention of honey in Scripture is in Genesis, where Jacob sent some honey with other gifts to the man in Egypt who turned out to be Joseph. The keeping of bees to produce more honey than the bees require for themselves has been prac ticed from antiquity, but it was not until 1851 that modem hives were first used. As early as 1788 M.J.E. Spitzner suggested that the bees which find a new source of food are able to communicate its location to other bees by a system of gyrations and vibra tions which these bees perform when they return. Somewhat over 150 years later, about 1946, Karl von Frisch cracked the bees’ code and discovered how they transmit to others of their kind the direction and distance from the home position to a new source of nectar. In 1959 Dr. Wolfgang Steche made a mechanical bee which can be man euvered electronically by remote con trol. This electronic bee can be made to gyrate and vibrate so as to signal to the bees any direction and distance the operator desires. Lorus J. Milne suggests that the present knowledge of directing bees to any location by means of an electronic bee enables us to replace the scout bees with auto mation. He proposes that a human observer in a light airplane commun icate by radio the location of areas ready for pollination to a man on the ground who then transmits the infor mation by means of a mechanical bee to bees which have been brought near the site in a mobile unit.
The ability of worker bees to meas ure distances, to compute the angle from the hive to the destination with respect to the position of the sun (even when going around obstacles), and to transmit these facts to other workers is innate in the bees and does not have to be learned. Besides this amaz ing behavior pattern, the workers have marvellous physical adaptations for the work they do. The workers do not reproduce themselves but are produced by the queens and drones, which do not have these endowments and have no use for them. Because of this Charles Darwin found himself in a difficult position in attempting to explain the evolution of social in sects by his theory of the survival of the fittest. If some bees become ge netically better adapted for their work, they perish without passing such traits to their offspring, for they have none. During the winter months honey bees form a mass and produce heat by muscular exertion. The colder the temperature in the environment, the more heat they produce — up to a temperature of 94°F. At this critical temperature the queen starts to lay eggs, a procedure which, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, fre quently destroys the colony. If the bees have gained their wonderful adaptations through a process of Dar winian survival of the fittest during a long period of time, should not this much simpler defective behavior have been eliminated already by the same process? It would seem that either the bees would have adopted a criti cal temperature somewhat lower than 94°F, beyond which they would not let the temperature rise, or else the queen would not start laying eggs at this temperature. If it is argued that the bees were in a warmer environ ment during the long period of time in which they were evolving their other adaptations, this does not an swer the question of how they be came adapted to meeting the cold by adjusting their temperature up to 94°F and no higher. Even though knowledge has in creased to where some bees can be replaced by automation, there is still much that is not understood if a na turalistic explanation is sought.
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A PRIL, 1964
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