I have promised to rescue you from your oppression in Egypt.  I will lead you to a land flowing with milk and honey  (Exodus 3:17). 

How would the Israelites have understood this promise of the Promise Land, of a place overflowing with milk and honey?  It may be difficult for us to transcend our modern consumer mentality and see anything other than jars of milk, jars of honey, i.e. supermarket products.  But I suspect the Israelites would have pictured a land of healthy dairy cattle and honey bees.  They would have further pictured the healthy pastures and meadows which could support the cattle and the bees.

This month's Prayer Digest features the honey bee.  Additionally, we'll mention that in the New Covenant, Jesus also rescues Egyptian Muslims from their own "oppression in Egypt."

Also, it's not too late to register for the Global Day of Prayer for Creation Care.  EEN is sponsoring an event in Washington, DC on April 26, 2012.  (I'm sorry, I don't know of other events in other countries or elsewhere.)  If you can't attend, please nonetheless join us with your prayers.

 

Link: Global Day of Prayer for Creation Care

 

Beekeeping may have originated in Ancient Egypt with evidence dating back to 2400

Ancient drawing of beekeeper and tube hives at tomb of Pabasa.

B.C.   It is said that Ramses III once offered the gods of the Nile 14000 kg of honey as a sacrifice.  Many of modern Egypt's beekeepers still use the old methods, whether constructing tubular hives from mud, or migrating with hives on barges up and down the Nile.

Egyptian beekeepers have begun to report the first cases of Colony Collapse Disorder on the African continent.   CCD, first investigated and more widespread in North America and Europe, is a disorder in which the worker bees mysteriously disappear from a hive, abandoning the queen, honey production, and the pollinating function.  Beekeepers and researchers have suspected varroa mites and other biological factors, but new studies seem to conclusively indict a type of pesticide called neonicotinoids.  This pesticide is applied to seeds before planting but then flows through the entire system of the plant.  Exposure to this pesticide seems to affect the bee's navigation ability.

An Egyptian woman collects honey from a tube hive constructed of mud.

"The way humanity manages or mismanages its nature-based assets, including pollinators, will in part define our collective future in the 21st century," said Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director. "The fact is that of the 100 crop species that provide 90 per cent of the world's food, over 70 are pollinated by bees. Human beings have fabricated the illusion that in the 21st century they have the technological prowess to be independent of nature. Bees underline the reality that we are more, not less, dependent on nature's services in a world of close to seven billion people."

Governments, researchers, and beekeepers are mobilizing globally to address Colony Collapse Disorder. Why wouldn't the Church support them with our prayers to the God who created the honey bee? 

Please join us in praying:

• Lord, give supernaturally-aided insight to researchers who continue to identify the causes of CCD.
• Lord, please come to the aid of those beekeepers whose livelihood has been severely curtailed.
• Lord, help such companies as Bayer CropScience and Sygenta, manufacturers of neonicotinoids, respond to these new studies with grace and integrity.
• In addition Lord, we continue to pray for believers in Egypt who suffer under great persecution.
• Lord, bring your gospel with power and might to this ancient land and establish your Church.  

Link: UNEP Study: Global Honey Bee Colony Disorders 

Link: New Study: "Pesticides Linked to Honeybee Decline." 

Link: Steiner quotations: "Decline of honey bees now a global phenomenon, says United Nations"   

Photos: Dr. A.F. Abou Shaara