16.Honey in quran and hadith A Lecture By Mr. Allah Dad Khan Former DG Agriculture Extension KPK Province Peshawar

Honey in Quran and HadithA Lecture

ByMr. Allah Dad Khan

The Glorious Quran is in perfect harmony with the established science about the bees.  Also honey, as I linked above, was proven to be a healing medicine by science today, and Allah Almighty mentioned this fact about honey 1,400 years ago, a "healing for men" ( للناس شفاء  .(فيهAgain, here are some of honey's medical benefits

للناس شفاء فيه

Female honey bees are worker and do most of the jobs. Male bees are called drones and don’t do work except mating with Queen. Queen lays egg 600-1500 per day and can live 3-4 years while workers only 6 weeks in Summer and 4-9 months in Winter. Worker bees are smaller in size than male and queen. Male bees are medium and Queen bees are the largest in size

How Honey Bee is different than other insects

One worker bee produces in average 1/12 teaspoon honey in her entire life. 1 standard teaspoon is 5 ml or 5 gram of water. But for honey this weight will be 8 gram(App). A professional beekeeper keeps 1 million bees can get 8/12 x 1,000,000 =  666,667 gm = 667 Kg. This amount is for one round. If you consider 6 round in a year total production of honey will be 667 x 6 = 4000 Kg or 4 Ton. This quantity is approximate & average production of professional beekeepers per year as I saw.

Worker Role

Honey bees fly 15 miles per hour and usually travel for honey 3 miles in every direction from their hives. They use their own language to communicate with each other. Their language is dancing and scents. While a honey bee find some source of honey anywhere she will inform her fellow. Their types of Dancing indicates a specific message. For example, if she find honey source her mode of dancing will express that and also show the location by curving her body in measure of angle.

Honey Bee Flight

The worker bees, those who gather pollen and make the honey, are actually all females. The male bees do not make honey. This was only known recently. However 1400 years ago the Quran refers to bees that generate the honey as females (the Arabic grammar is in the female mode):

Honey Bees

It is generally known that honey is a fundamental food source for the human body, whereas only a few people are aware of the extraordinary features of its producer, the honeybee.

Honey

As known, food source of bees is nectar, which is not possible to be found during winter. For this reason, they combine the nectar collected in summer time with special secretions of their body, produce a new food substance, which is honey, and store it for the coming winter months.

Food Source of honey bees

It is noteworthy that the amount of honey stored by the bees is much more than their actual need. The question which comes to the mind is why this "excessive production", which seems to be a waste of time and energy is not stopped? The answer to this question is hidden in the verse which states that the bee is "taught" so by the Lord.

Amount of Honey stored by Honey Bees

Bees innately produce honey not only for themselves but also for the human beings. As a matter of fact, bees, like many other beings in nature, are offered to the service of man. Just like the chicken laying at least one egg a day although it does not need it, or the cow producing much more milk than its offspring needs.

Bees Produce Honey for Humanbeing

Bees usually have to fly long distances and trace large areas to find food. They collect flower dust and honey constituent within a range of 800 m. from their hive. The bee which finds the flowers flies back to the hive to inform others about their place. But, how will this bee describe the place of the flowers to its friends in the hive? By dancing!… The bee returning to the hive starts to make some sort of a dance. This dance is a means of expression used to tell other bees the location of the flowers. This dance repeated many times by the bee, includes all the information about the inclination, direction, distance and other details of the food source that enable other bees to reach it.

Bees Social Contact

Your Lord revealed to the bees: "Build dwellings in the mountains and the trees, and also in the structures which men erect. Then eatfrom every kind of fruit and travel the paths of your Lord, which have been made easy for you to follow." From inside them comes a drink of varying colours, containing healing for mankind. There is certainly a Sign in that for people who reflect. (Qur'an, 16:68-69)

Quran 16.68-69

Honey contains 80% sugars and 20% water (moisture). While honey is processed moisture is kept between 18% – 22%. To produce one pound of honey, all the female bees in the colony must visit 2 million flowers, fly over 55,000 miles.  One tablespoon of honey provides 60 calories & contains 11 gm of carbohydrates + 1 mg of calcium + 0.2 mg of iron + 0.l mg of vitamin B + 1 mg of vitamin C

Information on Honey:

Usually a single honey bee will visit 50-100 flowers on one trip.  Honey includes all the substances necessary to sustain life.  Beekeepers can make up to 400 pounds of honey per year from a typical full size beehive.  Remember, Honey never spoils or rotten.  1 ounce of honey can be fuel for a honey bee to fly around the world. Honey bees collect sugary nectar from flower or similar plants

Honey Bees Visit

Honey bees have two stomach, one for digestion of own food and other is to bear nectar from flower. They collect nectar and water, keep in that stomach and return to the beehive.  While nectar in the stomach Natural chemical from head glands mixed with nectar. And finally they put it in empty honey comb. Actually nectar of flowers become honey inside the stomach of honey bees. When they keep this honey in the honey comb it has excess moisture. So it needs few days to evaporate that excess moisture.

Honey Bees Stomach

As I told before, moisture must come between 18% – 22%.  Commercial beekeepers don’t want to keep the honey long time in the hive. Because they want to produce more honey.  So, they extract honey before the time required to evaporate naturally. And they make this evaporation manually or with automated machine.

Moisture in Honey

In  Sahih Bukhari we read that the Prophet, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him, said: “Honey is a remedy for every illness and the Quran is a remedy for all illness of the mind, therefore I recommend to you both remedies, the Quran and honey.”

Hadith

In Bukhari (Volume 7: Book 65), Aisha narrates that, "Allah's Apostle used to love www.onislam.net - 29 - sweet edible things and honey." He also attributed many healing powers to honey.

Hadith