quotations about bees
As bees
In spring-time, when the sun with Taurus rides,
Pour forth their populous youth about the hive.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
WILLIAM BLAKE
Proverbs of Hell
How many cups the bee partakes--
The debauchee of dews!
EMILY DICKINSON
Poems
Even though the bee is small, there she is on the flower, doing something of value. And the value she creates there contributes to a larger ecosystem of value, in that mountain meadow, in that range of mountains, in the world and even the universe. And can't you just feel how happy she is?
JAY EBBEN
Painted Hives
For better or worse, honeybees are often much too busy to be bothered with personal reflection.
SUSAN BRACKNEY
Plan Bee: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Hardest-Working Creatures on the Planet
How mistaken those people are who suppose that a bee is, like the Prince of Evil, always going about in search of a victim. The fact is that the bee attends to its own business very diligently, and has no time to waste in unnecessary quarrels.
HENRY H. PENOYER
Dr. H. Penoyer's Bee-Palace
You will probably more than once have seen her fluttering about the bushes, in a deserted corner of your garden, without realising that you were carelessly watching the venerable ancestor to whom we probably owe most of our flowers and fruits (for it is actually estimated that more than a hundred thousand varieties of plants would disappear if the bees did not visit them) and possibly even our civilisation, for in these mysteries all things intertwine.
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
The Life of the Bee
Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don't they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.
RAY BRADBURY
Dandelion Wine
The pedigree of honey
Does not concern the bee;
A clover, any time, to him
Is aristocracy.
EMILY DICKINSON
Poems
For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life, and to the flower a bee is a messenger of love.
KAHLIL GIBRAN
"Your Body is the Harp of Your Soul"
Unfortunately for the bee, honey is also her pitfall, as wealth often is for those who pursue it as a goal in itself. The lure becomes greater than the reward. The bee is ultimately the dupe not of her enemies or managers but of her own instinct. She will continue to gather nectar as long as the last drop is available, just as the avaricious person relentlessly and unceasingly accumulates wealth.
WILLIAM LONGGOOD & PAMELA JOHNSON
The Queen Must Die: And Other Affairs of Bees and Men
So work the honey-bees,
Creatures that by a rule in nature teach
The act of order to a peopled kingdom.
They have a king and officers of sorts,
Where some, like magistrates, correct at home,
Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad,
Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,
Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds,
Which pillage they with merry march bring home.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Henry V
We're all busy little bees, full of stings, making honey day and night, aren't we honey?
BETTE DAVIS
All About Eve
For aye as busy as bees been they.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
The Canterbury Tales
I like pulling on a baggy bee suit, forgetting myself and getting as close to the bees' lives as they will let me, remembering in the process that there is more to life than the merely human.
SUE HUBBELL
A Book of Bees: And How to Keep Them
That which is not good for the swarm, neither is it good for the bee.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
The wild bee reels from bough to bough
With his furry coat and his gauzy wing,
Now in a lily-cup, and now
Setting the jacinth bell a-swing.
OSCAR WILDE
Her Voice
Nature's confectioner, the bee.
JOHN CLEVELAND
Fuscara
The only reason for being a bee that I know of is making honey ... and the only reason for making honey is so as I can eat it.
A.A. MILNE
Winnie the Pooh
A bee, and specifically the queen, is to a certain degree a "sun" animal. As a result, the sun, as it moves through the zodiac, has the greatest influence upon bees. The changes the sun undergoes as it moves through each sign are transmitted to the bee. But the bees are, naturally, also dependent on that which they find in plants. And this is where there is a connection between the farmers' sowing of the seed under a certain sign of the zodiac and the bees' finding of substances the plants have prepared for them. Such things aren't simply pulled out of nowhere; however, the way they are normally presented is very amateurish and misleading. These matters must be properly examined in a scientific manner so that they will have a firm foundation.
RUDOLF STEINER
Bees