I have written about honey bees as a Christian symbol of resurrection in the past, and actually drew upon my own experience as an amateur beekeeper (long ago) to preach about this one Easter morning. Hey, keeping fresh as an Easter preacher requires ingenuity. Bees have also been associated with Mary, the mother of Jesus -- Notre Dame.
I was pleased to see that the three bee hives atop Notre Dame Cathedral (above) survived the devastating fire this past week. Bees don't have lungs, so they can't asphyxiate on smoke, although any beekeeper will tell you that smoke is a tool to make these feisty little critters docile. If I recall correctly, these bees are a strain called Buckfast, developed at the abbey of the same name in Britain, which I have visited.
This is a nice little "resurrection" story for this Easter. Read more from a piece in the Montreal Gazette
PARIS — Hunkered down in their hives and drunk on smoke, Notre Dame’s smallest official residents — some 180,000 bees — somehow managed to survive the inferno that consumed the cathedral’s ancient wooden roof.
Confounding officials who thought they had perished, the bees clung to life, protecting their queen.
“It’s a big day. I am so relieved. I saw satellite photos that showed the three hives didn’t burn,” Notre Dame beekeeper Nicolas Geant told The Associated Press on Friday.
“Instead of killing them, the CO2 (from smoke) makes them drunk, puts them to sleep,” he explained.
Geant has overseen the bees since 2013, when three hives were installed on the roof of the stone sacristy that joins the south end of the monument. The move was part of a Paris-wide initiative to boost declining bee numbers. Hives were also introduced above Paris’ gilded Opera.
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