quotations about bees
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
But the shining and elegant bees are, like women, indolent.
ARISTOTLE
The History of Animals
His labor is a chant,
His idleness a tune;
Oh, for a bee's experience
Of clovers and of noon!
EMILY DICKINSON
Poems
In the past, people around the world heard the buzzing of bees as voices of the departed, a murmured conveyance from the spirit world. This belief traces back to the cultures of Egypt and Greece, among others, where tradition held that a person's soul appeared in bee form when it left the body, briefly visible (and audible) in its journey to the hereafter.
THOR HANSON
Buzz: The Nature and Necessity of Bees
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
The murmer of a bee
A witchcraft yieldeth me.
If any ask me why,
'Twere easier to die
Than tell.
EMILY DICKINSON
Poems
Their little bodies lodge a mighty soul.
VIRGIL
Georgics
The bee that hath honey in her mouth, hath a sting in her tail.
JOHN LYLY
Euphues
Where the bee sucks, there suck I;
In a cowslip's bell I lie.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Tempest
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"
Here again we touch one of the thousand enigmas of the waxen city; and it is once more proved to us that the habits and the policy of the bees are by no means narrow, or rigidly predetermined; and that their actions have motives far more complex than we are inclined to suppose.
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
The Life of the Bee
Here ever hum the golden bees
Underneath full-blossomed trees.
J.R. LOWELL
The Sirens
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
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
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
The honey of a crowded hive,
Defended by a thousand stings.
WILLIAM COWPER
Olney Hymns
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
Honey is sweet, but the bee stings.
GEORGE HERBERT
Jacula Prudentum
The busy bee teaches two lessons: one is not to be idle, and the other is not to get stung.
EVAN ESAR
attributed, 20,000 Quips & Quotes