The valley of Nimrod (v. 1) was named after “a mighty hunter before the Lord” (Genesis 11:8–9). The Prophet Joseph Smith changed that verse to read “a mighty hunter in the land” (JST, Genesis 10:5; italics added). Nimrod was a grandson of Ham, son of Noah (see Genesis 10:6–8). The geographical area of the valley of Nimrod was in or near ancient Assyria. Micah speaks of a future time when men “shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod in the entrance thereof” (Micah 5:6).
Their taking of fowls, fish, bees and seeds of every kind with them (Ether 2:2–3) was apparently by commandment. The land they were going to seems to have been void of these things. This condition may have been the result of the flood. The land had been divided in the days of Peleg, the fourth generation descendants from Shem. The Lord kept the divided part free of inhabitants as a refuge for the righteous who were led out of wickedness “into precious lands” (1 Nephi 17:37–38). The Jaredites were the first ones “brought by the hand of the Lord” (Ether 2:6 below). The Lehi colony was the second ones as far as we know (see 2 Nephi 2:3–6). The Mulekites were brought here about the same time. The land had been “preserved for a righteous people” (Ether 2:7 below).
Dr. Hugh Nibley has commented on the word “deseret” meaning honey bee:
By all odds the most interesting and attractive passenger in Jared’s company is deseret, the honeybee. We cannot pass this creature by without a glance at its name and possible significance, for our text betrays an interest in deseret that goes far beyond respect for the feat of transporting insects, remarkable though that is. The word deseret we are told (Ether 2:3), “by interpretation is a honeybee,” the word plainly coming from the Jaredite language, since Ether (or Moroni) must interpret it. Now it is a remarkable coincidence that the word deseret, or something very close to it, enjoyed a position of ritual prominence among the founders of the classical Egyptian civilization, who associated it very closely with the symbol of the bee. The people, the authors of the so-called Second Civilization, seem to have entered Egypt from the northeast as part of the same great outward expansion of peoples that sent the makers of the classical Babylonian civilization into Mesopotamia. Thus we have the founders of the two main parent civilizations of antiquity entering their new homelands at approximately the same time from some common center—apparently the same center from which the Jaredites also took their departure… . The Egyptian pioneers carried with them a fully developed cult and symbolism from their Asiatic home. Chief among their cult objects would seem to be the bee, for the land they first settled in Egypt was forever after known as “the land of the bee,” and was designated in hieroglyphic by the picture of a bee, while every king of Egypt “in his capacity of ‘King of Upper and Lower Egypt’” bore the title, “He who belongs to the sedge and the bee.”
From the first, students of hieroglyphic were puzzled as to what sound value should be given to the bee-picture… . We know that the bee sign was not always written down, but in its place the picture of the Red Crown, the majesty of Lower Egypt was sometimes “substituted for … superstitious reason.” If we do not know the original name of the bee, we do know the name of this Red Crown—the name it bore when it was substituted for the bee. The name dsrt (the vowels are not known, but we can be sure they were all short) …