In Ether 2:3, mention is made that the people of Jared and his brother took with them the "honey bee." According to Randall Spackman, honey was rare and expensive in Babylonia; so, the transportation of honey bees by the Jaredites indicates that they carried the luxury items with them as well. [Randall P. Spackman, The Jaredite Journey to America, p. 30, unpublished]
J. Eric Thompson wrote that not only was the domestic bee in ancient America but that there were gods of bees and beekeepers. Honey was considered a real treat for the Indians. [Diane E. Wirth, A Challenge to the Critics, p. 56]
According to Verneil Simmons, the stingless bees (Meliponidae) of the tropical areas of the Old World were also found in the tropical areas of the New World, although they were unknown in Peru. Columbus found honey from these bees in his first landing in Cuba. The Mayas of today still raise them and Maya lore concerning beekeeping was ancient long before the arrival of the Spaniards. Sahagun, the great Spanish priest historian of the early days of the Conquest in Mexico, wrote that the Aztecs kept three kinds of honeybees. In a newly discovered wall painting at the ancient city of Cholula, in Mexico, a bee is depicted hovering over a drinking scene. . . . The stingless bees of the Maya are hived in hollow logs. Left to themselves they will build nests in hollow trees or even in the ground. Their nests are well insulated and the bees are capable of surviving for long periods sealed up in the nests. This type could have survived the long journey of the Jaredites. (See The Social Behavior of the Bees, Michener, pp. 23, 329). [Verneil W. Simmons, Peoples, Places and Prophecies, pp. 32, 120, 272]
According to Warren and Palmer, linguistic data on the proto-Mixe-Zoque speakers (the Mesoamerican equivalent of Jaredite times) gives evidence for things spoken of in the Book of Ether, such as the honey bee, not explicitly proven archaeologically for that time period. There was a word for honey (spelled one way) and also a word for bee (spelled another way). [Bruce W. Warren and David A. Palmer, The Jaredite Saga, pp. 8-6,7, unpublished]
“They Did Also Carry with Them Deseret Which by Interpretation is a Honey Bee”
The word "deseret" is evidently transliterated from the original record, but fortunately the interpretation is included in Moroni's abridgment: "a honey bee" (Ether 2:3). This is one of the few Jaredite words transliterated in our present Book of Mormon; therefore it is of special significance to the scholars.
Dr. Hugh Nibley has written extensively on the background of this word, including the following ideas:
By all odds the most interesting and attractive passenger in Jared's company is deseret, the honeybee. We cannot pass the 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 it 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 known as "the land of the bee," and was designated in hieroglyphic by a picture of the bee, while the 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 the superstitious reasons." 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 was dsrt (the vowels are not known, but we can be sure they were all short). The "s" is dsrt had a heavy sound, perhaps best represented by "sh," but designated by a special character -- an "s" with a tiny wedge above it by which the Egyptians designated both their land and crown they served. . . . The bee symbol spread in other directions from its original home, wherever that was. . . . In all of these the bee is the agent through which the dead king or hero is resurrected from the dead, and it is in this connection that the bee also figures in the Egyptian rites. Now the original "deseret" people, the founders of the Second Civilization, "the intellectuals of On," claimed that their king, and he alone, possessed the secret of resurrection. That, in fact, was the cornerstone of their religion; it was nothing less than "the king's secret," the power over death by which he held his authority both among men and in the hereafter. . . . I am personally persuaded that the archaic and ritual designation of the bee was deseret, a "word of power" too sacred to be entrusted to the vulgar, being one of the keys to "the king's secret." [Hugh Nibley, The World of the Jaredites, pp. 191-192]
Ether 2:3 Deseret ([Illustration]): The Red Crown (Dsrt Crown) is clearly depicted on a prehistoric potsherd from Nakada, thus placing it among the oldest known symbols of royalty. It is the crown of the Lady Neith and is often substituted for the sign of the bee. Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 9, Plate XX (after Wainwright). [Hugh Nibley, There Were Jaredites, p. 321]