Bees

Bees are flying insects closely related to wasps and ants, and are known for their role in pollination and for producing honey and beeswax. Bees are a monophyletic lineage within the superfamily Apoidea, presently classified by the unranked taxon name Anthophila. There are nearly 20,000 known species of bees in seven to nine recognized families. They are found on every continent except Antarctica, in every habitat on the planet that contains insect-pollinated flowering plants.

The best-known bee species is the European honey bee, which, as its name suggests, produces honey, as do a few other types of bee. Human management of this species is known as beekeeping or apiculture.

Quotes



 * 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" (1869)


 * Ingentes animos angusto in pectore versant.
 * Their little bodies lodge a mighty soul.
 * Virgil, Georgics (29 BC), Book IV, line 83 (trans. Joseph Addison).


 * Hi motus animorum atque haec certamina tanta Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescunt.
 * Yet all this life and movement, all the strife May with a pinch of dust be brought to silence.
 * Virgil, Georgics (29 BC), Book IV, lines 86-87 (of bees swarming).


 * Forget not bees in winter, though they sleep.
 * Vita Sackville-West, in "Bee-Master" in The Land (1926).


 * One can no more approach people without love than one can approach bees without care. Such is the quality of bees.
 * Leo Tolstoy


 * Nature’s confectioner, the bee, (Whose suckets are moist alchemy, The still of his refining mold Minting the garden into gold,) Having rifled all the fields Of what dainty Flora yields, Ambitious now to take exercise Of a more fragrant paradise, At my Fuscara’s sleeve arrived Where all delicious sweets are hived.
 * John Cleveland, "Fuscara; or, The Bee Errant"

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)

 * Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 63-64.


 * The honey-bee that wanders all day long The field, the woodland, and the garden o'er, To gather in his fragrant winter store, Humming in calm content his winter song, 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 C. Lynch Botta, The Lesson of the Bee.


 * The pedigree of honey Does not concern the bee; A clover, any time, to him Is aristocracy.
 * Emily Dickinson, Poems. V. (Ed. 1891).


 * His labor is a chant, His idleness a tune; Oh, for a bee's experience Of clovers and of noon!
 * Emily Dickinson, Poems, XV. The Bee.


 * 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.


 * Seeing only what is fair, Sipping only what is sweet, ** * Leave the chaff, and take the wheat.
 * Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Humble-Bee.


 * 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 (1713), Canto I, line 82.


 * 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, The Church. Providence.


 * For pitty, Sir, find out that Bee Which bore my Love away I'le seek him in your Bonnet brave, He seek him in your eyes.
 * Robert Herrick, Mad Nan's Song.


 * "O bees, sweet bees!" I said; "that nearest field Is shining white with fragrant immortelles. Fly swiftly there and drain those honey wells."
 * Helen Hunt Jackson, My Bees.


 * Listen! O, listen! Here ever hum the golden bees Underneath full-blossoined trees, At once with glowing fruit and flowers crowned.
 * James Russell Lowell, ''The Sirens, line 94.


 * As busie as a Bee.
 * John Lyly, Euphues and his England, p. 252.


 * The bee is enclosed, and shines preserved, in a tear of the sisters of Phaeton, so that it seems enshrined in its own nectar. It has obtained a worthy reward for its great toils; we may suppose that the bee itself would have desired such a death.
 * Martial, Epigrams (c. 80-104 AD), Book IV, Epigram 32. (For same idea see Ant, Fly, Spider; also Pope, under Wonders).


 * In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true From pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew?
 * Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733-34), Epistle I. 219.


 * For 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 summers velvet buds, Which pillage they with merry march bring home.
 * William Shakespeare, Henry V (c. 1599), Act I, scene 2, line 188.


 * The solitary Bee Whose buzzing was the only sound of life, Flew there on restless wing, Seeking in vain one blossom where to fix.
 * Robert Southey, Tkalaba, Book VI, Stanza 13.


 * 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.
 * Charles Tennyson Turner, A Summer Night in the Bee Hive.


 * How doth the little busy bee Improve each shining hour, And gather honey all the day From every opening flower.
 * Isaac Watts, Against Idleness.


 * The wild Bee reels from bough to bough With his furry coat and his gauzy wing, Now in a lily cup, and now Setting a jacinth bell a-swing, In his wandering.
 * Oscar Wilde, Her Voice.