quotations about bees
And we had sugar of our own,
Ages before its name was known.
Those early homes 'neath forest trees,
Were ever musical with bees.
THOMAS MILLER
Birds, Bees, and Blossoms
Burly dozing humblebee!
Where thou art is clime for me.
Let them sail for Porto Rique,
Far-off heats through seas to seek,
I will follow thee alone,
Thou animated torrid zone!
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"The Humble-Bee"
But the shining and elegant bees are, like women, indolent.
ARISTOTLE
The History of Animals
Every bee's honey is sweet.
GEORGE HERBERT
Jacula Prudentum
Got among Bees and Ants are social systems found
So complex and well-order'd as to invite offhand
a pleasant fable enough: that once upon a time,
or ever a man was born to rob their honeypots,
bees were fully endow'd with Reason and only lost it
by ordering their life as to dispense with it;
whereby it pined away and perish'd of disuse.
ROBERT BRIDGES
The Testament of Beauty
His labor is a chant,
His idleness a tune;
Oh, for a bee's experience
Of clovers and of noon!
EMILY DICKINSON
Poems
The bee that hath honey in her mouth, hath a sting in her tail.
JOHN LYLY
Euphues
The little bee returns with evening's gloom,
To join her comrades in the braided hive,
Where, housed beside their mighty honey-comb,
They dream their polity shall long survive.
C.T. TURNER
Summer Night in the Bee Hive
The more I learned about pollinators, the more interested I became in the Queen of pollination: the 20,000 species of bees worldwide that are largely responsible for the seeds of rebirth of three-quarters of the flowering plants in the world. I discovered that assuming, as most people do, that "bee" equals "stinging honey bee" was even more ludicrous than assuming "dog" equals itty bitty Chihuahua.
PAIGE EMBRY
Our Native Bees: North America's Endangered Pollinators and the Fight to Save Them
A comely old man as busy as a bee.
JOHN LYLY
Euphues and His England
Here ever hum the golden bees
Underneath full-blossomed trees.
J.R. LOWELL
The Sirens
The murmer of a bee
A witchcraft yieldeth me.
If any ask me why,
'Twere easier to die
Than tell.
EMILY DICKINSON
Poems
The honey of a crowded hive,
Defended by a thousand stings.
WILLIAM COWPER
Olney Hymns
The only time I ever believed that I knew all there was to know about beekeeping was the first year I was keeping them. Every year since I've known less and less and have accepted the humbling truth that bees know more about making honey than I do.
SUE HUBBELL
A Book of Bees: And How to Keep Them
The poison of the honey-bee
Is the artist's jealousy.
WILLIAM BLAKE
Ideas of Good and Evil
Where the bee sucks, there suck I;
In a cowslip's bell I lie.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Tempest
All things go to prove that it is not the queen, but the spirit of the hive, that decides on the swarm. With this queen of ours it happens as with many a chief among men, who though he appear to give orders, is himself obliged to obey commands far more mysterious, far more inexplicable, than those he issues to his subordinates.
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
The Life of the Bee
For the bee, honey is the ultimate reality. It represents the fulfillment of her life mission, the triumph over her enemies, the continuity of the hive, the justification for working herself to death. Honey is to bees what money in the bank is to people--a measure of prosperity and well-being. But there is nothing abstract or symbolic about honey, as there is about money.
WILLIAM LONGGOOD & PAMELA JOHNSON
The Queen Must Die: And Other Affairs of Bees and Men
Honey is sweet, but the bee stings.
GEORGE HERBERT
Jacula Prudentum
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.
EMILY DICKINSON
Poems