BEES QUOTES III

quotations about bees


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For where's the state beneath the firmament
That doth excel the bees for government?

GUILLAUME DE SALLUSTE DU BARTAS
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Divine Weeks and Works


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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


Got among Bees and Ants are social systems found
So complex and well-order'd as to invite offhand
a pleasant fable enough: that once upon a time,
or ever a man was born to rob their honeypots,
bees were fully endow'd with Reason and only lost it
by ordering their life as to dispense with it;
whereby it pined away and perish'd of disuse.

ROBERT BRIDGES

The Testament of Beauty


In the nice bee, what sense, so subtly true,
From pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew?

ALEXANDER POPE

Essay on Man


The bee that hath honey in her mouth, hath a sting in her tail.

JOHN LYLY

Euphues


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"


But when was ever honey made
With one bee in a hive?

THOMAS HOOD

The Last Man


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


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


Here ever hum the golden bees
Underneath full-blossomed trees.

J.R. LOWELL

The Sirens


His labor is a chant,
His idleness a tune;
Oh, for a bee's experience
Of clovers and of noon!

EMILY DICKINSON

Poems


Honey is sweet, but the bee stings.

GEORGE HERBERT

Jacula Prudentum


The honey of a crowded hive,
Defended by a thousand stings.

WILLIAM COWPER

Olney Hymns


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 poison of the honey-bee
Is the artist's jealousy.

WILLIAM BLAKE

Ideas of Good and Evil


Their little bodies lodge a mighty soul.

VIRGIL

Georgics


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


A comely old man as busy as a bee.

JOHN LYLY

Euphues and His England


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