quotations about bees
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
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Buzz: The Nature and Necessity of Bees
Where the bee sucks, there suck I;
In a cowslip's bell I lie.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Tempest
My banks they are furnished with bees,
Whose murmur invites one to sleep.
WILLIAM SHENSTONE
A Pastoral Ballad
In the nice bee, what sense, so subtly true,
From pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew?
ALEXANDER POPE
Essay on Man
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 when was ever honey made
With one bee in a hive?
THOMAS HOOD
The Last Man
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
Honey is sweet, but the bee stings.
GEORGE HERBERT
Jacula Prudentum
The bee that hath honey in her mouth, hath a sting in her tail.
JOHN LYLY
Euphues
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 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
Their little bodies lodge a mighty soul.
VIRGIL
Georgics
The honey of a crowded hive,
Defended by a thousand stings.
WILLIAM COWPER
Olney Hymns
His labor is a chant,
His idleness a tune;
Oh, for a bee's experience
Of clovers and of noon!
EMILY DICKINSON
Poems
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 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
A comely old man as busy as a bee.
JOHN LYLY
Euphues and His England
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 bees got their governmental system settled millions of years ago, but the human race is still groping.
DON MARQUIS
Archy and Mehitabel