quotations about bees
Every bee's honey is sweet.
GEORGE HERBERT
Jacula Prudentum
The poison of the honey-bee
Is the artist's jealousy.
WILLIAM BLAKE
Ideas of Good and Evil
Forget not bees in winter, though they sleep.
VITA SACKVILLE-WEST
"Bee-Master", The Land
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
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 murmer of a bee
A witchcraft yieldeth me.
If any ask me why,
'Twere easier to die
Than tell.
EMILY DICKINSON
Poems
The bees got their governmental system settled millions of years ago, but the human race is still groping.
DON MARQUIS
Archy and Mehitabel
In the nice bee, what sense, so subtly true,
From pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew?
ALEXANDER POPE
Essay on Man
Where the bee sucks, there suck I;
In a cowslip's bell I lie.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Tempest
Their little bodies lodge a mighty soul.
VIRGIL
Georgics
Honey is sweet, but the bee stings.
GEORGE HERBERT
Jacula Prudentum
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
So sudden
The bees
They came flying
So violent
The bees
They came sly
So scary
The bees
They came wide
So wild
The bees
They came
crying
They said: "I take my time"
You take your time
Please take your time
I take my time
I take my time
ANIMAL COLLECTIVE
"Bees"
Wiser far than human seer,
Yellow-breeched philosopher!
Seeing only what is fair,
Sipping only what is sweet,
Thou dost mock at fate and care,
Leave the chaff and take the wheat.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"The Humble-Bee"
A comely old man as busy as a bee.
JOHN LYLY
Euphues and His England
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
The careful insect 'midst his works I view,
Now from the flowers exhaust the fragrant dew,
With golden treasures load his little thighs,
And steer his distant journey through the skies.
JOHN GAY
Rural Sports
How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower!
ISAAC WATTS
Against Idleness
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
God's little epigrams, the Bees,
Are pointed and impartial.
Could Martial rival one of these?
No, not even Martial.
RICHARD R. KIRKE
The Bees