quotations about bees
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
Where there are bees there are flowers, and wherever there are flowers there is new life and hope.
CHRISTY LEFTERI
The Beekeeper of Aleppo
No good sensible working bee listens to the advice of a bedbug on the subject of business.
ELBERT HUBBARD
Epigrams
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
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
The honey-bee that wanders all day long ...
Seeks not alone the rose's glowing breast,
The lily's dainty cup, the violet's lips,
But from all rank and noxious weeds he sips
The single drop of sweetness closely pressed
Within the poison chalice.
ANNE BOTTA
The Lesson 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
A bee is never as busy as it seems; it's just that it can't buzz any slower.
KIN HUBBARD
attributed, The Modern Handbook of Humor
The bee's life is like a magic well: the more you draw from it, the more it fills with water.
KARL VON FRISCH
Bees: Their Vision, Chemical Senses and Language
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"
Ah! woe is me; woe, woe is me,
Alack and well-a-day!
For pity, Sir, find out that bee
Which bore my love away.
I'll seek him in your bonnet brave,
I'll seek him in your eyes;
Nay, now I think th'ave made his grave
I' th' bed of strawberries.
ROBERT HERRICK
The Mad Maid's Song
Some say the bee stings: but I say, 'tis the bee's wax.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Henry VI
Men, like bees, want room. When the hive is overflowing, the bees will swarm, and will be likely to take up their abode where they find the best prospect for honey. In matters of this sort, men are very much like bees.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
"Our Composite Nationality"