Wet-type earwax fluoresces weakly under ultraviolet (UV or "black") light. One of the ways of testing the authenticity of amber is to pass it under a fluorescent light - amber should fluoresce. The crystalline structure of dried urine causes it to fluoresce a dull yellow color under UV light.

The hardness of amber varies from 1-3, and it is transparent to opaque, with the cloudy turbidity due to air bubbles and inclusions. It has no cleavage, conchoidal fracture, and is tough to brittle (Baltic amber tends to be tough, while Dominican amber, brittle). The luster is resinous and amber fluoresces bluish-white, yellow-green, or blue (more fluorescence with higher sulfur content). The color of amber varies, with white, yellow, and orange common, as well as red, brown, green, "black" (deep shades of other colors), and bluish colors possible.
http://www.emporia.edu/earthsci/amber/go340/ambers.htm

Blue amber can be found, predominately in the Dominican Republic. It is also found in the Baltic. An amber researcher Sawkiewicz determined that Baltic blue amber was formed through the optical effect of closely concentrated bubbles of the same size, 0.00007 mm.The author has in his possession a tiny piece which shows some blue colouring and is pictured here. Green fossil resin can be found, again from the Dominican Republic and also in copal from Colombia. Burmite from Burma has a deep red colour.
http://www.gplatt.demon.co.uk/properti.htm

Chlorophyll will fluoresce in the red part of the spectrum and also give off heat. Chlorophyll is a green pigment found in most plants, algae, and cyanobacteria. Chlorophyll is the molecule that absorbs sunlight and uses its energy to synthesise carbohydrates from CO2 and water. This process is known as photosynthesis and is the basis for sustaining the life processes of all plants.

Chlorophyll molecules are specifically arranged in and around pigment protein complexes called photosystems which are embedded in the thylakoid membranes of chloroplasts. Light energy absorbed by chlorophyll molecules in a leaf can undergo one of three fates: it can be used to drive photosynthesis, excess energy can be dissipated as heat, or it can be re-emitted as light - chlorophyll fluorescence. The spectrum of fluorescence is different to that of absorbed light, with the peak of fluorescence emission being of longer wavelength than the absorption.

Light energy absorbed initially by the antenna and transferred to the reaction centers is channeled by a number of different processes including photochemistry, photo-protective heat dissipation, other heat dissipation and about 3%-9% of the light energy absorbed by chlorophyll pigments is re-emitted as fluorescence. The emission peak is of a longer wavelength than the excitation energy. This effect was first observed more than 100 years ago, when N.J.C. Müller (1874) by visually using colored glass filters. He also noted that fluorescence changes that occur in green leaves are correlated with photosynthetic assimilation. Lack of appropriate technical equipment prevented a more detailed investigation of this phenomenon. The light energy drives photosynthetic electron transport through PSII and PSI leading to the oxidation of water, oxygen evolution, the reduction of NADP+ to NADPH, membrane proton transport and ATP synthesis.
http://www.optisci.com/cf.htm

Lutein and zeaxanthin belong to the class of carotenoids known as xanthophylls and both contain hydroxyl groups. In photosynthetic plants lutein and zeaxanthin are located in chloroplasts where they are integrated with light-harvesting chlorophyll proteins. Lutein and zeaxanthin are phytochemicals found most often in leafy green vegetables, but also in other fruits and vegetables. Chicken egg yolks are a rich food source of lutein and zeaxanthin. Lutein is only obtained through the diet, while zeaxanthin can be produced by conversion from lutein in the eye.

Xanthophylls serve as accessory light-gathering pigments and to protect these organisms against the toxic effects of ultra-violet radiation and oxygen. Both lutein and zeaxanthin absorb blue light (peak absorption is 446 nm) The absorption of blue light protects plants from damage but does not prevent photosynthesis. Absorption of blue light is responsible for the colour of lutein and zeaxanthin, causing yellow pigmentation at low concentrations and orange-red at high concentrations. The name lutein is derived from Latin for "yellow".

Lutein and zeaxanthin are two dietary carotenoids which accumulate in the ‘yellow spot’ or macula lutea of the retina. The macula is located roughly in the center of the retina, temporal to the optic nerve. It is a small and highly sensitive part of the retina responsible for detailed central vision. The fovea is the very center of the macula. The macula allows us to appreciate detail and perform tasks that require central vision such reading. It is interesting to note that lutein and zeaxanthin are the only carotenoids known to concentrate specifically in the eye tissues.


Macular pigment has been implicated as a risk factor in age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the most prevalent cause of vision loss in the elderly. Vision loss in AMD is due to the irreversible death of photoreceptors and/or the invasion of leaky, unwanted blood vessels into the retina. At advanced stages of this progressive disease, everyday activities such as reading, driving, or even seeing the face of a loved one become impossible.

In the short-term study, reported in the November 2002 issue of Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science (IOVS), the team divided the carotenoid-deficient quail into two groups, and for one week preceding light damage, they fed one group zeaxanthin-supplemented diet. The study established that photoprotection was strongly correlated with the concentration of zeaxanthin in the retinas of the quail. Retinas with low concentrations of zeaxanthin had suffered severe light damage, as evidenced by a very high number of apoptotic photoreceptor cells, while the group with high zeaxanthin concentrations had minimal damage. Apoptosis is programmed cell death, the final common pathway for photoreceptor death in retinal degeneration.

The macular pigment acts like "sunglasses" by protecting the critically important central sight from damaging light waves. The distribution of lutein and zeaxanthin in the eye may indicate they have different functions. Zeaxanthin is the dominant component in the center of the macula, while lutein dominates at the outer edges. The eye is selective and preferentially places dietary zeaxanthin in the very center of the macula, the most critical area for central vision with the greatest need for protection. This selective uptake of zeaxanthin occurs even though lutein is more available in the diet by a 20:1 ratio.

Previous investigations may have obscured evidence of zeaxanthin's greater protective role by looking at the two carotenoids together, rather than separately. Although both of these carotenoids protect the retina, zeaxanthin has been shown to be a better photoprotector and a recent animal study supports the photoprotective activity of zeaxanthin. Additionally, zeaxanthin's chemical structure makes it a much more effective antioxidant than lutein.

The human study concluded that decreased blood plasma zeaxanthin, but not blood plasma lutein, is significantly associated with the risk of age-related macular degeneration. This correlation strongly indicates that a high level of dietary zeaxanthin intake may directly affect the risk of developing macular degeneration. Increasing intake through diet or supplementation may help to slow down or stop vision loss with those who have been diagnosed with AMD.
http://www.mdsupport.org/library/zeaxanthin.html


Many thanks:

Safety of Dietary Supplements for Horses, Dogs, and Cats By National Research Council (U.S.)
http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/carotenoids/carotenoids.htm
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v209/n5028/abs/2091135a0.html
http://jxb.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/51/345/659.pdf
http://www.naturalnews.com/024847_magnesium_insulin_medicine.html
http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/local/projects/steer/chloro.htm
http://www.ab.ipw.agrl.ethz.ch/~yfracheb/flex.htm
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hall/1410/lab-B-26.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macula
http://www.ghuth.com/2005/10/03/a-thought-experiment-on-retinal-design/#more-16
http://www.mdsupport.org/library/zeaxanthin.html
http://www.healthyeyes.org.uk/index.php?id=23
http://omlc.ogi.edu/spectra/PhotochemCAD/html/riboflavin.html
http://anrvitamins.com/glossary/zeaxan.html

More Than Meets The Eye

At the moment, daylight pours into the room where I am writing this. The light is pretty much invisible to me. I see very well all the objects, and the walls, and everything else in the room - but not the light itself. If I hold my hand up to the light coming into the room, I can see it strike my hand making it suddenly brighter, and if I leave my hand in the light long enough, I can feel warmth. If I were to shake a dusty cushion, the daylight might strike the dust and therefore I would see the light, but otherwise no, I don't physically see the light until it reaches an object. This light is known as "white light", and it is supposed that it is made up of all the colours of the visible spectrum.

Books tell me that the white light in this room is moving very fast, approaching speeds of 300,000 km/s. It is supposed that white light is refracted by an object. The material absorbs certain frequencies of the visible spectrum, and it reflects others. It is the frequencies which are reflected that we see as the colour of the object. I now struggle with this theory.

I struggle with the theory mainly because we are told that white light has no frequency. Surely white light should have a frequency? Everything in the Universe has a frequency. All electromagnetic radiation, ranging from X-rays to radiowaves has a frequency - except, we are told, white light. White light apparently, is the sum of all the frequencies in the visible spectrum. By combining these frequencies into white light then the light has no frequency. I am not convinced.

Light leaves the Sun and travels to our planet. On its journey it does not fill space with light. The space between the Earth and the Sun remains black. The light that left the Sun is not visible until it hits the Earth. It's as if the atmosphere of the Earth transforms the energy from the Sun into visible light. Right now, in this room, the light from the Sun enters through the window as white light.

All matter emits EMR. Only when something is at absolute zero will it no longer emit EMR. A small fraction of the EMR spectrum is taken up by the visible spectrum, but if you look at the world around us, everything - absolutely everything - is made up of colour (the possible exception being black which is considered to be the absence of colour). Colours are not a property of an object though, they actually belong to the eye.

The pigment in a material will behave in such a way that it somehow activates receptor cells in the eye which the brain then interprets as colour. I don't believe the material absorbs some frequencies of white light and reflects others. I think matter generates EMR due to the electric fluid of the aether.

The aether field has a constant applied pressure, somewhat similar to a hydraulic system. We write this pressure as the speed of light in a vacuum: 300,000 km/s; except it's not really a speed, but rather a volumetric flow rate. This volume is normally measured in cubic metres per second. Should the volumetric flow rate of the aether therefore be written as 300, 000 cubic kilometres per second?

The fluid of the aether is induced to flow through matter. Molecules act as motors which suck in and blow out the fluid of the aether. The aether is manoeuvred through the atomic vortices of matter, generating a difference in pressure between the applied pressure constant of the aether field, and the pressure of the aether inside matter.

In water, the speed of light is said to be about 3/4 the speed of light in a vacuum, around 225,000 km/s. These kids pulled a simple experiment to show how the different values for the speed of light can be measured.
http://www.ms.uky.edu/~skim/SpeedOfLight/

As said before, the pressure of the aether field is an applied constant of 300,000 km/s. The aether has been way-laid by being forced to pass through an atomic obstacle course. The fluid of the aether has become choppier. The peaks and troughs of the EM waves move closer together. The speed of light in water has a value of 225, 000 km/s - is this illustrating a pressure drop in the aether field in water?

The speed of light in glass, which has a higher refractive index than water, is supposed to be something in the region of 200, 000 km/s. Once again, do we have a pressure drop?

Refracted light inside a glass prism produces the colours of the rainbow - the visible spectrum - in a process known as dispersion. A ray of white light enters the glass and is bent towards the normal. The colours of the visible spectrum leaving glass are bent away from the normal. It's as if the light enters the prism at an angle, then makes a bee-line for the other side like it's a speedboat on flat water, before being reflected out through the otherside at an angle.

I remember once swimming in the beautiful crystal waters off Corsica, and being struck by just how blue it was. It wasn't grey like the waters I'm used to back home in Brighton - this stuff was really blue. The other thing I noticed was my reflection on the surface of the water - no surprises there - but at the time I was immersed in the water looking up, just below the surface of the water. The surface of the water was acting as a mirror, and this is something known as total internal reflection. Is something inside the prism acting like the surface of water?

We see the colours of the rainbow inside the prism, and then we see them leave the prism. EMR is a wave which propagates in the medium of the aether. Inside the glass prism the fluid of the aether gets choppier. The peaks and troughs come closer together. The frequencies of light get higher. These higher frequencies are what we recognise as the visible spectrum. The visible spectrum thus emerges from the prism and out into the big bad world. The fluid of the aether is maintaining the higher frequencies outside the prism in order to support the visible spectrum. The glass medium of the prism is effectively making waves in the aether field which it then transmits into the air. And one cannot help but make the analogy of a pebble being thrown and making ripples on a pond.

It is often handy to think of light as a wave – like the wave you make by dropping a stone in a pond – because light has many wave-like properties. When you drop a stone in a pond, you create ripples, and you could actually measure the distance between the ripples. This distance is called the wavelength. Each color of light has a unique wavelength.

Christian Huygens, a Dutch physicist fond of optics, was one of the first to suggest visible light is a wave disturbance, like the ripples on a pond or the vibrations of a violin string. Huygens kept at his research and showed that light waves interfere with each other in the same way as waves of water, and in the same way as waves from musical instruments.

Thomas Young devised a light-slit experiment which showed light as a wave disturbance. The crests and troughs from two diffracted rays alternately added together and cancelled each other out. The interference effect is not restricted to light. Waves produced on the surface of a pool or pond will spread in all directions and undergo an identical behavior. Where two waves meet in step, they will add together to make a larger wave by constructive interference. Colliding waves that are out of step will cancel each other via destructive interference and produce a level surface on the water.

In one of Newton's experiments, he cast the spectra of three prisms onto one another so that they overlapped without coinciding. In the centre, where all the colours fell, the combined spectrum was white. Is this an example of destructive interference, where the vibrant frequencies of the visible spectrum cancel each other out?

What of the fluid of the aether as it moves from the vibrant frequencies of the spectra into the lower frequencies of white light? We are told that white light has no frequency, so we should therefore expect to find the fluid of the aether perfectly still. But is that quite the case as I look around my room? The molecules of the air are surely inducing the aether to wobble. Indeed, the speed of light in air is slightly lower than the speed of light in a vacuum. There's a pressure drop in the aether field inside this room compared to the constant applied pressure of the Universe. I suspect white light is really low frequency EMR.

Sunlight is directional. It starts at the Sun, and then it arrives at our planet. My back garden at this moment is half in sunlight, while the other half is shaded by the house. The half that is exposed to the Sun is much brighter. The colours on that side are much more vivid than those of the garden dulled by the shade.

I look at the bright green grass. The grass contains a pigment which my eye detects as green. The grass is somehow creating a pressure drop in the aether field, which generates a frequency of EMR that I see as the colour green. Why is it that the grass always looks greener on the otherside? Why does the grass look so much brighter in the sunlight?

When a photo is taken, the shutter in the camera opens for a fraction of a second to allow light from the scene to enter. The light is focused by the camera lens onto a piece of light sensitive film. The film contains chemicals which break down when exposed to light and thus the image is recorded on the film by the pattern of chemicals, broken down or otherwise. The more the chemicals are broken down, the brighter the resulting photo will be.
http://freespace.virgin.net/hugo.elias/graphics/x_posure.htm

Can this process not only be applied to cameras, but also to how we visualize the world around us? Is an object brighter because receptor cells in the eye have a longer exposure to brighter colours? This longer exposure is only possible if light from brighter objects is reaching my eye before the light of dull objects. Is the light from the grass in the sunlight travelling with a greater velocity to reach my eye - or is it that these changes in velocity take place inside the eye - or is it both?

As I write this I feel like I've ended up somewhere very strange. Somewhere unexpected. I've long suspected that white light has no frequency because I imagined it had been mistaken for heat, but maybe there's more to it than that. Is there, quite literally, more than meets the eye?


Many thanks:

Physics demystified By Stan Gibilisco
http://www.hartnell.edu/faculty/pmoth/Files/AST1LAB/Spectroscope.doc.
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~colmusic/clario2.htm
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/08/faster-than-the-speed-of-light-no-i-dont-think-so.ars
http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/GBSSCI/PHYS/Class/light/u12l2c.html

Both the honey and the brood of stingless bees are relished by Africans. The honey is usually sourish and thin compared to that of honey bees, but it can be just as tasty, depending on the species of stingless bee and the source of the nectar. On rare occasions they may make honey from Euphorbia flowers, and since the plant is known to be poisonous, Africans regard this honey as poisonous too.

At the top the nest, which is lined with a mixture of cerumen and mud, is connected to the outside by a more or less vertical passage. Below the nest is a second passage like a pipe, half a metre or more in length and which simply ends in the ground. This acts as a drain pipe for any water that may reach the nest. Within the nest cavity the brood area is enclosed in laminated sheets of cerumen, separate from the storage pots. The brood cells are arranged in layers, to form a more or less spiral comb.
http://www.kiliweb.com/onana2.html

The Bees Knees

Rabbinic tradition related a notable conception of the relation of manna to dew. Drawing primarily on Mekhilta Yoma 75b, the medieval Bible commentator Rashi summarized the midrashic variants as follows:

"There was a layer of dew" [Exod.16:13] The dew lay on the manna. At another place [Num.9:9] it says "And when the dew came down," and so forth ["upon the camp at night, the manna fell upon it"] The dew fell upon the ground and the manna fell upon it, and then the dew returned and fell upon it. Behold, it was as though it were carefully packed in a chest.
--From the Mystery of Manna By Daniel Merkur

Manna is the name of a food which, according to the Bible, was eaten by the Israelites during their travels in the desert. In the description in the Book of Exodus, manna is described as being available six mornings a week, after the dew had evaporated. The God-sent manna fell only six days in the week so that the Sabbath would remain holy. Moreover, twice as much fell on Friday (to accommodate the Sabbath).

"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work" (Exodus 20:8?10)

This is actually a commandment; it is the Fourth Commandment. I have always puzzled over this one. We all deserve at least one day off a week don't we? But do we deserve to be punished if we don't take it? What if we have a different day off - Monday or whatever ? In the grand scheme of things - does it really make any difference which day I rest? Does it really matter how many days a week I don't work?

"For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth ... and rested on the seventh day. Wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it" (Ex. 20:11)

For Muslims it is Friday which is the holy day; for Jews, it's Saturday. Maybe God's not too hung-up-on the Sabbath. Maybe God would prefer it if we were just nicer to one another. Maybe God is trying to draw our attention to something.

Israel is often named in the Bible as a "land of milk and honey," but it was largely thought that this referred to "honey" made from dates and figs, as the book does not mention honeybee cultivation. The new discovery shows that indeed, 3,000 years ago, the Holy Land harbored an extensive beekeeping industry. By those times, Rehov could have had around 2,000 inhabitants, mostly Canaanites (the ancient Jews came from a Canaanite population).
http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Oldest-Beehive-3-000-Years-Old-64684.shtml

We've all heard of the expression "busy as a bee". Bees are well thought of as industrious, and hard working. One day I was reading something about the everyday life of bees, when I was struck by the significance of six days in their larvae stage.

There are three stages in the development of a bee. The first is the egg stage. The Queen lays an egg in the bottom of each cell. The egg is centered in the cell and one end is stuck to the bottom.

For a Worker Bee larvae this stage lasts three days. Worker Bee larvae are fed Royal Jelly for three days, after which they are fed Bee Pollen and Honey.

Then, after six days in the larval stage, the cell is capped with wax and the bee spends the next 12 days in the pupa stage. After a total of 21 days the adult worker bee emerges!
http://www.purehoney2u.com/beespedia/bees_story.asp



The way the cells are capped also reminds me of how slabs are pushed in position to cover the entrance of a tomb. After he died on the cross, Jesus was taken by Joseph of Arimathea, and Nicodemus to be buried in a tomb. Joseph placed Jesus’ body in his own new tomb that he had cut out of the rock. He rolled a big stone in front of the entrance to the tomb and went away. It was Preparation Day (the day before the Sabbath), and the Sabbath (Saturday) was about to begin, so everyone hurried home. According to the Bible, the women were the first to return on Sunday (Easter Sunday). Jesus was resurrected on the third day.


But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. “Don't be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him." (Mark 16:1-7 )

It is not hard to find differences between what we know of the teachings of Jesus and what we know of the teachings of the Essenes. Some believe Jesus to have been an Essene. The Essenes called themselves Therapeutae, "healers," claiming that their austere lifestyle gave them the power to cast out demons of sickness and even to restore life of the dead. Due to the various spellings of "Essene" the word could also mean "pious one," or "doers," or "doers of the Torah".

The Essenes were members of an ascetic Jewish sect of the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD. Most of them lived on the western shore of the Dead Sea. They are identified by many scholars with the Qumran community that wrote the documents popularly called the Dead Sea Scrolls. They numbered about 4,000 members. Admission required two to three years of preparation, and new candidates took an oath of piety, justice, and truthfulness.

According to Philo of Alexandria and other writers of the 1st century AD, the Essenes shared their possessions, lived by agriculture and handicrafts, rejected slavery, and believed in the immortality of the soul. Their meals were solemn community affairs. The main group of Essenes opposed marriage. They had regular prayer and study sessions, especially on the Sabbath.
http://www.mb-soft.com/believe/txo/essene.htm

One day, Jesus sat amidst people who listened to his words with amazement. He said: "Seek not the Law in your scriptures, for the Law is life, whereas the scripture is dead. The Law is the living word of the living God to living prophets for living men. In everything that is life, is the Law written. You find it in the grass, in the trees, in the river, in the mountain, in the birds of heaven, in the fishes of the sea, but seek it chiefly in yourselves. God did not write the Law in books, but in your heart and in your spirit. "
--From the Gospel of the Essenes.

When I read the above statement from the Gospel of Essenes, I thought it something which could just as readily have been said by Heraclitus, or Zeno. It was Zeno's statement "man conquers the world by conquering himself", followed by his understanding of God as the Universe, which most attracted me to Stoicism. If you think about it, the only way God is ever going to be able to be omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient is by being the Universe itself. Zeno, and Stoic philosophy, was heavily influenced by Heraclitus.

The Heraclitean notion of fire which is physis, logos, and God was reinterpretted, and appropriately elaborated and became the central idea of the ontology of Zeno and the Stoa. This divine fire or aether was for Zeno the basis for all activity in the Universe. For the Stoics, God penetrates the world "as honey does the honeycomb". Sometime later, the Gospel of John identifies Jesus as the incarnation of the logos, or Word of God, through which all things are made.

The Chaldee word for a bee is DABAR which also means a WORD, thus the bee is symbolic for the Word of God, Jesus Christ. The bee is also associated with the lion, in Samson’s riddle of the lion and the bees. Another connection, for Jesus Christ is the Lion of Judah. Samson unaided slew the roaring lion and from its carcass took immortal honey, and out of the LION of Judah came the WORD of God; out of His death came eternal life for man.
http://www.godisnowhereonline.info/missy/blessedbee.html



The sacredness of the bee has a long history throughout the world. Bee carvings have been found on the temple walls of ancient Egyptians. Indeed, references to honey and its healing powers are found in ancient papyri dating back to 5000 BC. Bee pollen then and now is described by some as "a life-giving dust".

Although the bee has not been deified by the ancient Egyptians, it was worshipped as a source of eternal life. An early title of the pharoahs was Bity, meaning "the one of the bee". The tomb of the ancient Egyptian king Ramses III (1198-1167 BC) has bee designs in it. In most Egyptian funeral vaults, bees are shown in all phases of honey gathering.

The mystical dimension of Islam known as Sufism maintained a secret brotherhood called Sarmoung, or Sarman, meaning Bee. Members of the organization viewed their role as collecting the precious 'honey' of wisdom and preserving it for future generations.

Deborah was the name of one of the greatest prophetesses of Ancient Israel. The Jewish historian Josephus noted that the name Deborah, in Hebrew DBVRH, means "bee".

In India, old Hindu pictures of the god Krishna, as an avatar of Vishnu, has a blue bee in the middle of his forehead. The Hindu gods Vishnu, Krishna and Indra were called Madhava or "nectar born ones", and were often represented as bees perched on a lotus flower. Soma, the moon, is called a bee. Siva is represented as a triangle surmounted by a bee. Kama, god of love, has a bow-string of bees.

In Ancient Crete the bee signified the life that comes from death (as did the scarab in Egypt). The Cretan Zeus was born in a cave of bees and was fed by them, and Zeus also had the title of Melissaios, "Bee-man"; he fathered a son, the hero Meliteus, by a nymph who hid the child from Hera in a wood, where Zeus had him fed by bees.

Dionyous was fed on honey as a babe by the nymph Makris, daughter of Aristaeus, protector of flocks and bees. The priestess of Apollo at the Delphic Temple was called the ‘Delphic Bee’ and the bee was also the symbol of Diana and Ceres, supposedly because of its virginity.

At Ephesus, on the West coast of what is now Turkey, where the many breasted Artemis was worshipped, the bee appeared as her cult animal. Her temple at Ephesus was a symbolic beehive. Her priestesses were called Melissae (bees) and the eunuch priests were Essenes (drones). The title of drone is somewhat fitting for a eunuch because the male bee is castrated by the queen bee during the performance of mating mid-air. Pausanias, Greek traveller and geographer of the 2nd century AD, had said that the "essene" meant "King Bee".

The worship of Artemis merged with that of the Virgin Mary, whose tomb was said to be located there, with the establishment of the church of Our Lady of Ephesus in AD 431 . Bees are symbols of the Virgin Mary throughout the western World and especially in Eastern europe. In the Slavonic folk tradition the bee is linked with the immaculate conception.

Bee symbolism is a vital component of Masonic ideals, although its application within the craft is not without paradox. For instance, the ‘Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry’ informs us that the Bee is important to Freemasonry for the same reason it was important to the Egyptians, because of all insects; “only the Bee has a King.”

Drones are male honey bees. Male honey bees develop when the queen bee lays unfertilized eggs. It is not clearly understood what prompts a honey bee queen to lay an unfertilized egg versus a fertilized egg. The fertilized egg hatches into a worker bee. Can we then not say that the drone is of virgin birth?

Drones are characterized by eyes that are twice the size of those worker bees, and queens. When comparing the head of the drone with those of the queen, one readily notices the compound eyes, those crescent-shaped projections on the side of the head. Three small points, present as well in queen and worker, in a triangle at the top of the head are small eyes, or ocelli. The ocelli are actually three eyes arranged in a triangular pattern, each eye consisting of a simple dense lens, which is made from a thickening of the head exoskeleton, and sensory retinal cells beneath the lens.

A queen bee can lay up to 1500 eggs in one day. In her lifetime, she may lay more than a million eggs. She lays her eggs in special nursery cells of the honeycomb. Each little egg is about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. It hatches into a larva in 3 days and comes out of the cell. Worker bees feed a substance called royal jelly to the larva. Royal jelly makes larva grow rapidly. Queen bee larva eat royal jelly for 6 straight days.

Worker bee and drone bee larva are fed royal jelly for 3 days. They then are fed a watery mixture of honey and pollen. After the 6 days of eating, the larva are sealed back into the nursery cells where they make little cocoons and turn into pupa. In about 2 weeks the pupa turn into adult bees. They chew open their wax nursery cells and come out as adults.
http://www.uen.org/utahlink/activities/view_activity.cgi?activity_id=1022

The word "apis" meant "bull" to the Egyptians and also "bee" in Latin. This may not be a coincidence. The antennae, or feelers, of a bee protrude like two long "horns " from its head. It used to be believed that bees could be spontaneously generated from the carcasses of bulls, especially if they were buried up to the horns in the ground. This process was known as bougonia. Virgil describes the practice in his Georgics book IV, attributing it to the Egyptians. Some see the bougonia as not so much a symbol of resurrection or rebirth, but rather "an exchange of death for life".

It has been said that the Goddess was depicted as “Queen Bee” by the Minoans and that bees were believed to have been closely tied to bull worship, once dedicated to the Goddess. The bee and the bull had similar mystical meanings. The Minoans believed that the bees were the spirits of dead sacred bulls. Seals and gemstones often showed a bee on one side and a bull on the other.

Also of note are the bee-masked priestesses which appear on Minoan seals and the Goddess figure of Merope, meaning “honey-faced”, found in Greek mythology. This evidence points towards the possibility that the female representation found in the pendant of gold bees is not merely decorative, but an intentional composition created to symbolize the Great Goddess.



We used the honeybee, Apis mellifera, in which queens are highly polyandrous and able to maintain sperm viable for several years. We identified over a hundred proteins representing the major constituents of the spermathecal fluid, which females contribute to sperm in storage. We found that the gel profile of proteins from spermathecal fluid is very similar to the secretions of the spermathecal gland and concluded that the spermathecal glands are the main contributors to the spermathecal fluid proteome.

A detailed analysis of the spermathecal fluid proteins indicate that they fall into a range of different functional groups, most notably enzymes of energy metabolism and antioxidant defense. A metabolic network analysis comparing the proteins detected in seminal fluid and spermathecal fluid showed a more integrated network is present in the spermathecal fluid that could facilitate long-term storage of sperm.
http://genomebiology.com/2009/10/6/R67

Abstract: Research on model organisms has substantially advanced our understanding of aging. However, these studies collectively lack any examination of the element of sociality, an important feature of human biology. Social insects present a number of unique possibilities for investigating social influences on aging and potentially detecting new mechanisms for extremely prolonged, healthy life spans that have evolved naturally.

Social evolution has led to life spans in reproductive females that are much longer (up to over 100-fold) than those of males or of nonreproductive worker castes. These differences are particularly dramatic because they are due to environmental influences, as all individuals develop from the same genomes.

Social insect colonies consist of semi-autonomous individuals, and the relationship between the colony and the individual creates many interesting predictions in the light of the common theories of aging. Furthermore, the variety of lifestyles of social insects creates the potential for crucial comparative analyses across distinct social systems.
http://sageke.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/2004/5/pe5



Queen cups are larger than the cells of normal brood comb and are oriented vertically instead of horizontally - I wonder what is the significance of these factors on development? The queen bee larva is given unlimited rich food, and a larger chamber to grow in, and more exposure to circulating air - all of which must only benefit her growth - but why does it matter that she is vertical?

The compound eyes of bees exhibit hexagonal packing systems, and in some way echo the structure of the hive. The beehive's internal structure is comprised of a densely packed matrix of hexagonal cells made of beeswax, called a honeycomb. Which reminds me of something. When one casts an eye over the "machine" that Maxwell designed to help him in his calculations of EMR, one can't help but see the hexagonal dipolar vortices as a honeycomb structure.



It's funny how the honey bee performs the waggle dance to tell her sisters about a nearby food source in the shape of a figure eight. This figure eight represents a dipolar vortice; one vortex is outlined in a clockwise direction, and the other vortex is done in a counter-clockwise direction. One could almost imagine it was the humble bee which inspired Maxwell into creating his formulas for EMR.

All snowflakes, though never alike, are invariably hexagonal. A hexagon has six sides and six points; in numerology six is the number of man; it is the number of imperfection; the human number.

The [six days of creation] is not perfect because God created the world in 6 days, but rather God perfected the world in 6 days because the number was perfect.

-Vincent Foster Hopper, Medieval Number Symbolism, 1938.


Bees are able to regulate the temperature of the hive throughout the seasons. In the winter the bees cluster around the queen and take turns moving to the cold exterior of the cluster. In the summer they cool the hive and dehydrate the nectar into honey by fanning their wings. If the temperature of the hive rises due to extreme summer temperatures the bees, via an unknown signal, alert all hive members. In response the bees stop what they are doing, even those that are foraging for nectar at a great distance. These tiny insects each collect a drop of water to bring back to the hive to cool it, rushing back and forth with a cargo of moisture until the heat emergency is over.
http://www.naturalnews.com/022541.html

Amber sounds like it should be related to ambrosia. Etymologists, however, tend to think it has come by mistake from anbar, an Arabic word meaning 'ambergris' (perfumed secretions of the sperm whale); while 'ambrosia' comes from the Greek a - mbrotos meaning 'not mortal' or 'immortal'. So it seems there is nothing between them. Yet they have much in common.

Honey is a key ingredient of ambrosia, and most of the world's amber comes from the Baltic which is characteristically honey-coloured. 'Likeness' rules sympathetic magic. Still in Ajan they go further saying amber is actually honey that has run down the mountain and solidified by the sea.

Honey and amber appear in tombs of Egyptian pharaohs back to 3000 BC, for probably the same reason - both are preservatives. Honey was used for embalming, as was mythical ambrosia; and amber perfectly preserves insects, like bees, in its fossilised resin from pines millions of years old.
http://homepage.mac.com/ian20/shaman/pambrosia.html

Aum is explained in the Upanishads as representing the vast Cosmos and its parts, including past, present and future. It is from this primal vibration from which all physical, mental and spiritual manifestations come forth. This sound can be heard as the sound of one's own nervous system.

Meditators and mystics hear it constantly, very much like the sound made by an electrical transformer or a swarm of bees, or a roaring river or the rushing of the sea. It is a strong, inner experience, one that yogis hold with great reverence. It is the word from which Amen derived.
http://www.gpaonline.com/logomeaning.html

This is probably one of the longest posts I've made so far. It's hard to resist making it even longer. There's such a wealth of interesting facts, historical tit-bits, and mysticism surrounding the everyday bee, that I almost feel like I am unable to stop myself diving back in and immersing myself in more.

All this talk of the elixir of life has drawn me back to the ear. I think it's possible that the elixir of life has something to do with the otolith organs of the inner ear. I figure that the rate of perception, the rate at which the brain communicates with itself, could be manipulated by the otolith organs, and thereby bend our perception of time. It's in the ear we find we produce something very much in common with honey bees: wax.

Okay it's not exactly beeswax, but tiny glands in the ear canal produce cerumen, which protects the sensitive eardrum. Sound waves bounce off of the eardrum and make it vibrate—very important for hearing. Ear wax protects this tightly stretched membrane from dirt and dust.

Earwax is best described as having shades of amber. The exact composition of earwax varies from person to person and ranges in color from golden-yellow to tan to dark brown or even black. Scientists have not yet discovered exactly what pigment is responsible for giving earwax its color. Indeed, earwax was used in medieval times as a pigment in illuminated manuscripts.

Wet-type earwax has been seen to fluoresce weakly under a UV light. Step with me on a tangent here, but some pieces of amber are known to fluoresce. The Dominican blue amber is known to fluoresce even in daylight. I was wondering, if only for the sake of asking, that there might be something important which shares properties in both earwax and amber?





Many thanks:



Animal Magick By D. J. Conway
The Biology of the Honey Bee By Mark L. Winston
Masonic Symbolism By Charles Clyde Hunt
The Lore of the Honey Bee By Tickner Edwardes
http://www.philosophybasics.com/philosophers_zeno_citium.html
http://www.masjidtucson.org/publications/books/SP/2004/sep/page3.html
http://www.captted.com/bees/beemanual/cb05.htm
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070719-bee-control.html
http://animals.howstuffworks.com/insects/bee.htm/printable
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070508190031.htm
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050212/news_1n12bee.html
http://www.britishbee.org.uk/faq.php
http://www.webphemera.com/2009/05/queen-bee-not-as-royal-as-you-may-think.html
http://near-death.com/experiences/origen046.html
http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/e/essenes.html
http://www.tribwatch.com/molech.htm
http://www.heraldmag.org/olb/contents/dictionaries/two%20babylons%20dictionary.htm
http://andrewgough.co.uk/bee3_1.html
http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/1239539
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Drone_(bee)
http://www.coopext.colostate.edu/4dmg/Pests/whatis.htm
http://www.weborix.com/Numbers.htm
http://www.greatdreams.com/crop/bee/bee.htm
http://www.yesmag.ca/brain/brainbump.php?id=28
http://www.scirpus.ca/cap/articles/paper040.htm

http://www.orbitforkids.com/doubletakes/yellow/dt_yellow_waggle.html
http://www.meridianinstitute.com/eamt/files/still2/st2ch4.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bees/danceswagg.html

It's a small male sperm whale, only a year or two old—maybe 16 feet long if it were all here. Conveniently, only the head remains, at most a ton of blubber, skin, and bones resting on a wooden pallet. "You can lift it with a forklift! I love it," says Ketten, a biologist who studies the hearing of whales. Because this whale has been kept frozen, it is the freshest sperm whale she has cut into in years, and she can't help contrasting it with her last sperm whale dissection in 1999, on New Year's. She was at a party, "in velvet minidress and three-inch heels," when she got the call—a whale had beached and died on Nantucket Island. She dropped everything and got on an airplane. The whale stank horribly. She and her team dissected the ears and returned to the airport. On the way home everyone smelled so bad they were put on another plane by themselves, Ketten recalls.

Her subject this day had stranded on a beach in the Gulf of Mexico months earlier. Bathers poured water on him and covered him with their towels, but he was too sick to return to the sea, too big for any wildlife rehabilitation center. To end his misery, he had to be killed. Because his peripheral veins had collapsed, it proved impossible to inject a mortal dose of sedative. Finally, a veterinarian administered a local anesthetic, cut an artery, and let the whale quietly bleed out into the shallow water. Then the vet and a team from the National Park Service cut off his head, packed it in 150 bags of ice bought at a minimart, and trucked it to a walk-in freezer.

Ketten cuts through layers of blubber and muscle, searching for the tympano-periotic bulla, a bone complex that houses the middle and inner ear. She shows a dry specimen, smaller than her fist, taken from a whale that stranded in 1964. It may be hollow, but it is extraordinarily heavy. Ear bones of cetaceans—whales, dolphins, and porpoises—are the densest bones in the world, protecting delicate inner-ear tissues from damage and the tremendous pressure of dives. Sperm whales are thought to dive as much as a mile below the surface in search of squid and other prey.

Blubber is surprisingly attractive: a spotless milk-white layer, inches thick, beneath the whale's deep, rich black skin. Beneath the blubber, Ketten finds jaw fats, creamy in color, far softer. When she tentatively identifies the shape of the casing that holds the fats, she says: "It's so cool! It's a sort of ovoid lobe of fat—if my theory is correct—that runs along the jaw, conducting sound waves." She describes the lobes as shaped like a pair of rabbit's ears, one on each side of the jaw.

As dusk falls, she reaches the ligaments behind the bulla and calls for a flashlight. Cutting it loose, she holds it up for all to admire before injecting it with formalin to preserve the cochlear structures inside. "It's a rock that has really delicate membranes in it," she says.

On the second day, the biologists tip the head over with a forklift so they can work on the other side. Ketten injects methylene blue dye into the outer ear, a slit about a third of an inch wide and shaped like a sound hole on a violin. The dye travels less than two inches before it hits an obstruction, possibly a lump of wax and dead tissue similar to those Ketten has seen in other whales. The canal may be a blind pouch, a useless relic of the whale's ancestry as a land animal. Ketten says she will examine it "slowly, tediously, carefully" in the laboratory to figure out whether it has any function.

Next, she saws out a block of tissue that contains the middle and inner ear so it can be put through a CT scanner, membranes intact. When the block finally comes loose, she peers into the space behind the ear and points out the enormous auditory nerve that passes through a hole in the skull from the brain to the ear. The nerve is big not only because whales are big; it is big because hearing is a whale's most important sense.

Because cetaceans have evolved so that their outer ears do little if any work, researchers had suggested that jaw fats receive sounds. Ketten was the one who put forth convincing evidence that the soft fat shaped like a rabbit's ear in a whale's head will pick up sound waves as the mammal moves through water and carry the waves to the middle and inner ear. "This particular type of fat has an acoustic impedance that's similar to seawater," she says, referring to cetaceans affectionately as "acoustic fatheads."

While the structure of cetaceans' middle and inner ear is similar to that of land mammals, including humans, Ketten has found differences that allow whales and dolphins to hear higher frequencies than they otherwise might, improving their ability to echolocate. She has determined that cetaceans can hear much higher and lower frequencies than humans because they have evolved a bigger range of widths and stiffnesses in the basilar membrane in the cochlea of their inner ears.

Ketten also discovered that cetacean ears fall into three anatomic groups based on their lives in the water: "The frequencies they hear tell you something about what's important to them in their environment."

For example, odontocetes—toothed whales and dolphins—come in two flavors. Type I odontocetes hear upper-range ultrasonics, peaking above 100 kilohertz, about 80 kilohertz higher than human ears can hear. These animals include species such as the Amazon dolphin, which navigates in narrow spaces and clouded waters. Type II, the lower-range ultrasonic odontocetes, peak below 80 kilohertz. They are creatures of the coast and the open sea, needing lower frequencies to echolocate over longer distances in the search for, say, herring. There's something of a trade-off involved: Higher frequencies give precise images in echolocation; lower frequencies travel much farther but miss very small objects.

So little is known about so many species of whales and dolphins that Ketten becomes frustrated when she is pressured by environmentalists and government agencies to give definite answers. She grumbles that "marine mammalogy is a field in which the plural of anecdote is data." And although she is eager to study the blocks of tissue she cut from the Fort Walton Beach sperm whale, she has had to put much of that work on hold to focus on the most demanding, high-profile case she has ever undertaken: 16whales that beached in the Bahamas two years ago.

Most were beaked whales, and they stranded in the Providence Channels in the northern Bahamas. At the time, the U.S. Navy was testing tactical mid-frequency sonar in the area. Six of the whales died. Ten were pushed back to sea and may have survived. The deaths—and the possibility that sonar was responsible for them—triggered a controversy that is still unsettled.

In 1986, when Darlene Ketten was working at Harvard, she happened to overhear a conversation about cochlear implants in a hallway. "They were saying, 'Well, we can't get good scans because of the metal implant,' and I said, 'Yes, you can.'"

Much of a cochlear implant is made of platinum, a dense element that plays havoc with scans. As dense as platinum is, it's not much denser than cetacean ear bones, which had been a problem Ketten had to overcome in her scans. Soon she began consulting with implant teams at Harvard's Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

http://discovermagazine.com/2002/apr/featwhales

Why do statues of Buddha have long earlobes? What's the difference between fat Buddha and regular Buddha?

Dear Cecil:
In Chinese restaurants I always see statues of Buddha with long earlobes. I sometimes ask the folks who work there what significance this has. So far, even the Buddhists (three now) have no idea. Do you? -- Eric Bottos, via e-mail What's the difference between the fat Buddha and the regular Buddha? One report I've heard is that Buddha was so good-looking that he asked to be made less attractive so he could study more and fend off women less.
— Cori, Boston

The earlobes are elongated, partly to indicate the Buddha is all-hearing and partly as a reminder of the heavy earrings that weighed them down before Siddhartha renounced material things to seek enlightenment.

The fat, laughing guy isn't the capital-B Buddha but a lesser buddha called Hotei (or Miroku or Miluo or Budai or Putai, depending on language). The model for Hotei was (probably) a cheerful, overweight Chinese zen monk or healer who wandered the countryside helping people circa 950 AD. In Asia the belly is one's spiritual center and source of power, so rubbing the laughing buddha's belly brings good luck, and is as close to achieving buddha nature as most of us will get.
— Cecil Adams
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2714/why-do-statues-of-buddha-have-long-earlobes


Atherosclerosis is a degenerative condition in which arteries build up deposits called plaques (atheromas) which consist of lipids (mainly cholesterol), connective tissue and smooth muscle cells originating from the arterial wall. Another term used to describe atherosclerosis is "hardening of the arteries"

Significant symptoms of atherosclerosis only appear at the end stage of the disease process when blood flow to a particular body part has been greatly reduced. An early warning sign of atherosclerosis is a crease in the ear lobe. This is because a decrease in blood flow over a period of time results in a collapse of the vascular bed of the ear lobe. This leads to a diagonal ear lobe crease which has been recognized as a sign of atherosclerosis since 1973. Studies show that the ear lobe crease is a better predictor of heart disease than any of the other known risk factors including high blood cholesterol, smoking history, sedentary lifestyle and others. Its presence does not prove that the person having it has coronary artery disease but it strongly suggests it. This correlation, unfortunately, does not work with Orientals and American Indians, but seems to hold true for all other races.

Common sugar promotes higher blood levels of cholesterol, triglycerides and uric acid. It also increases platelet stickiness and should be limited in any preventive diet for atherosclerosis as much as possible. An increase in dietary fiber (especially psyllium seed husks, legumes and oat bran) lowers cholesterol as well as improves bowel elimination.
http://www.skepticfiles.org/mys1/atherosc.htm

"There is no magic bullet, diet plan, specific food, or type of exercise that specifically targets belly fat. But the good news is belly fat is the first kind of fat you tend to lose when you lose weight," says Michael Jensen, MD, a Mayo Clinic endocrinology specialist and obesity researcher.

And why is that? "Visceral fat, the kind tucked deep inside your waistline, is more metabolically active and easier to lose than subcutaneous fat under the skin, especially if you have plenty of it," explains Penn State researcher Penny Kris-Etherton, PhD, RD.

And the more weight you have to lose, the more quickly you're likely to start losing your belly fat, experts say.

"People who are significantly overweight may see quicker results in their belly than someone who has less to lose in that area, such as a postmenopausal pouch," says Georgia State University nutrition professor, Christine Rosenbloom, PhD, RD.

"Visceral fat is more metabolically active and easier to lose than subcutaneous fat, especially if you have plenty of it and the right conditions are met...."
http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/the-truth-about-belly-fat