Huda and the Busy Bees

At the far end of Dada-ji's allotment in Derby, past the runner beans and the purple lavender, stood two white wooden boxes. They hummed. They hummed all day long.

Huda wasn't sure. In the park, she always ran away from bees. But today she wore her very own bee suit, white from top to toe, with a net hood over her face, thick gloves and wellies.

"I look like an astronaut," she said in a small voice.

"A very brave one," said Dada-ji. "Remember: stand back, keep still and stay calm."

He puffed a little cool smoke from his smoker to help the bees stay calm too. Very gently, he lifted the lid.

The humming grew louder, and a warm smell floated out, sweet and waxy and golden. Dada-ji lifted out a wooden frame covered in crawling bees, and underneath them were rows and rows of tiny wax rooms.

A bee settled on Huda's glove. Huda froze. Keep still, she told herself. Stay calm. The fuzzy, stripy bee rubbed her feelers, then zoomed back to the hive. Huda breathed out and smiled.

Still standing back, she peered closely. "Dada-ji! The rooms are all the same shape!"

"Hexagons," said Dada-ji. "Six sides each. The young bees make the wax from their own bodies. Hexagons fit together snugly, with no gaps at all."

Another bee landed on the honeycomb, waggled her body and walked in a little figure of eight, round and round.

"Is she being silly?" giggled Huda.

"She's talking," said Dada-ji. "She has found some flowers, and she's telling her sisters. The way she points tells them which way to fly. How long she waggles tells them how far."

"Her sisters?"

"Nearly all these busy bees are girls," said Dada-ji. "They drink nectar from the flowers with their long tongues and carry it home in a special honey tummy. Then they fan it with their wings until it turns into thick honey. One bee makes much less than a teaspoon of honey in her whole life."

Huda's eyes went wide behind the net. "So my jar of honey took hundreds of bees! But who taught them? Bees don't go to school."

Dada-ji smiled. "Allah guided them. There's a surah in the Quran called An-Nahl. It means the Bee."

"A surah called the Bee?" said Huda.

"Yes! In it, Allah says that He inspired the bee. That means He put the knowing right inside her. He guided her to make her homes in the mountains, in the trees and in the things people build." He patted the hive. "Like this one. And Allah says that from the bees' bellies comes a drink of different colours, with healing in it for people. There is a sign in that for people who think."

All the way home, Huda kept smiling. She wasn't scared of bees any more, just amazed.

That evening, Dada-ji stayed for supper and put two jars of his honey on the kitchen table. One was pale, like butter. One was darker, like golden tea. "Different flowers make different colours," he said.

"Different colours!" said Huda. "Just like Allah said."

She had honey on toast, warm and sticky. "Bismillah," she said, and took a big bite. It tasted like sunshine. She remembered all those busy bees and whispered, "SubhanAllah."

Later, tucked up in bed with her teeth brushed, Huda pictured the bees snuggled together in their humming white house, resting until morning.

"Thank You, Allah," she whispered, "for the bees, and the flowers, and the honey." And she drifted off to sleep, dreaming of golden hexagons and a soft, sleepy hum.