The Female Worker Bee An-Nahl

In Arabic, the verbs ittakhidhi, kuli, usluki and pronoun butuniha are all feminine singular, grammatically identifying the working bee as female. In a honey bee colony, all workers, the bees that forage, build, and produce honey, are exclusively female. Male drones perform none of these tasks. This biological fact was completely unknown until Dutch scientist Jan Swammerdam used early microscopy in the 17th century to discover bee biology. His findings came over a thousand years after the Quran's precise grammatical choice.