quotations about bees
The murmer of a bee
A witchcraft yieldeth me.
If any ask me why,
'Twere easier to die
Than tell.
EMILY DICKINSON
Poems
The bee that hath honey in her mouth, hath a sting in her tail.
JOHN LYLY
Euphues
In the nice bee, what sense, so subtly true,
From pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew?
ALEXANDER POPE
Essay on Man
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
A comely old man as busy as a bee.
JOHN LYLY
Euphues and His England
The poison of the honey-bee
Is the artist's jealousy.
WILLIAM BLAKE
Ideas of Good and Evil
Here ever hum the golden bees
Underneath full-blossomed trees.
J.R. LOWELL
The Sirens
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
Forget not bees in winter, though they sleep.
VITA SACKVILLE-WEST
"Bee-Master", The Land
Everything takes time. Bees have to move very fast to stay still.
DAVID FOSTER WALLACE
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
Bees work for man, and yet they never bruise
Their Master's flower, but leave it, having done,
As fair as ever and as fit to use;
So both the flower doth stay, and honey run.
GEORGE HERBERT
Providence
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 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 honey of a crowded hive,
Defended by a thousand stings.
WILLIAM COWPER
Olney Hymns
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
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
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 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
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
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