Honey is a big feature of Rosh Hashanah. We dip the apple in honey on the first night of the Jewish New Year, and continue to dip our Challah in honey (instead of the usual salt) for much of this holiday season. Honey is sweet and soothing, makes for great tea and delicious honeycake, is an ancient perservative, and even has impressive health benefits.
Knowing a bit about what goes into making one-cup of honey, just about the amount served on a triple-table at Shabbos House, can be quite inspirational if we apply it from honeybees to ourselves.
It takes approximately 2 million flower visits for bees to produce a cup-full of honey! Of course, bees are much smaller than humans and one-cup is a big deal for them relative to their size… but still, that’s a huge amount of work, so much time and effort. We too often fall into the trap of seeking easy solutions, increased efficiencies, and lots of results for minimal effort. The bees teach us otherwise! Put in the work, take the time, make the effort – the results will be sweet.
The lifespan of worker bees (who are the majority of bees in the hive) depends on how much they’ve flown. After enough miles their wings simply give out and they don’t live much longer after that. And here’s the kicker, or stinger: Many worker bees simply do not live long enough (especially over a winter) to benefit from the honey they produce. But this does not stop them or weaken their resolve. They are out there every day, buzzing around, logging the miles, going from one flower to the next. It’s not about me, says the bee. How often do we slacken off or lose interest when there’s no personal benefit?
When bees come to a flower they have one interest, and that’s collecting nectar. That’s all they are there for. But nature has other intentions. While the bee collects nectar, she plays the supremely important role of a pollinator. Bees may not realize it, but they are doing much more than making honey. For every cup of honey, there are bushels of apples and peaches, plants and trees of all types that thrive thanks to the bees active visits. In our journeys in life, in our daily activities, we may have our focus and reasons for our activities and locations, but Chassidic teaching speaks to the internal spiritual mission that is within all of our life’s activities and specific to our locations and interactions.
There’s a lot to think about in a cup of honey!