Proverbs 24: 13-14

¹³ Eat honey, my son, for it is good;
    honey from the comb is sweet to your taste.
¹⁴ Know also that wisdom is like honey for you:
    If you find it, there is a future hope for you,
    and your hope will not be cut off. 

Have you ever considered what honey means to bees? In a word, it means hope. Surprised?


Without giving you an entire course on beekeeping, let me just point out a few things here! You may have learned in the past that there is one queen in a bee-hive; there are lots and lots of "drones" and even more "worker bees."  The honeycomb, which bears (and humans) enjoy eating, is actually home and a nursery for "baby" bees . . . the eggs are laid and bees develop in some of those little sections of the comb. As they develop, they are fed a diet that changes as they mature through the stages necessary for them to become productive members of the hive.  First they are fed something called royal jelly, then pollen and honey. 
So, without the honey to feed them, the future generations would not survive, and there would be no hope of the hive continuing on.


There's another way that the honey is hope for the bees --- in the winter time, the bees all stop flying, and congregate in the center of the hive. They gather around the queen, and form what is called a "winter cluster." What are they doing in this cluster?  Shivering.  Really.
Here is another witness to our awesome Creator . . . the bees actually vary their shivering enough to keep the temperature in the center at certain levels: 81 degrees Fahrenheit for the start of winter, and 93 degrees for the time period that the queen begins laying eggs again.  And catch this: the worker bees rotate through the cluster (from the outside to the inside) so that no bee gets too cold! And, what do they eat in order to have the energy to shiver and rotate? You guessed it! Honey!


You can see that without honey, the bees have no hope of survival. So, too, Solomon is telling us that wisdom is like honey . . . it is very pleasant, just as honey is sweet to the taste. It is also our hope for the future -- we may learn from it, and it will keep us. Way back when we first began our study, we read that wisdom will keep us safe, and happy. 
Pro 1:33  but whoever listens to me will live in safety
    and be at ease, without fear of harm.
Not only safe from evil, but from the fear of it, as well. Wisdom's instructions will help us "rest easy."