Sue Hubbell > Quotes

“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 – A Melodious Beekeeping Memoir and Nature Journal from the Missouri Ozarks

“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 – A Melodious Beekeeping Memoir and Nature Journal from the Missouri Ozarks

“...lepidopterists give the noun a gerund's push toward the verb, and say that butterflies are nectaring...”
― Sue Hubbell

“[N]o such thing as objective writing, . . . every inscription, every traveler's tale, every news account, every piece of technical writing, tells more about the author and his time than it does about the ostensible subject.”
― Sue Hubbell, Waiting for Aphrodite: Journeys into the Time Before Bones

“...when I offered to either stay and help or go bake a pie, it was the pie that was most needed. It took six pies to finish the roof. I had not known that pies were such an important part of construction.”
― Sue Hubbell, A Country Year: Living the Questions

“We are past our reproductive years. Men don’t want us; they prefer younger women. It makes good biological sense for males to be attracted to females who are at an earlier point in their breeding years and who still want to build nests, and if that leaves us no longer able to lose ourselves in the pleasures and closeness of pairing, well, we have gained our Selves. We have another valuable thing, too. We have Time, or at least the awareness of it. We have lived long enough and seen enough to understand in a more than intellectual way that we will die, and so we have learned to live as though we are mortal, making our decisions with care and thought because we will not be able to make them again. Time for us will have an end; it is precious, and we have learned its value. Yes, there are many of us, but we are all so different that I am uncomfortable with a sociobiological analysis, and I suspect that, as with Margaret Mead, the solution is a personal and individual one. Because our culture has assigned us no real role, we can make up our own. It is a good time to be a grown-up woman with individuality, strength and crotchets. We are wonderfully free. We live long. Our children are the independent adults we helped them to become, and though they may still want our love they do not need our care. Social rules are so flexible today that nothing we do is shocking. There are no political barriers to us anymore. Provided we stay healthy and can support ourselves, we can do anything, have anything and spend our talents any way that we please.”
― Sue Hubbell, A Country Year: Living the Questions

“What is forever,' I asked. . . . Forever, it appeared, was a word made up by adults so they would not have to think about endings. . . . A friend who is an attorney told me not that long ago that a recent national survey of legal documents shows that 'forever' lasts about thirty years on average. But, if forever can mean until governments fall or lose interest, what does 700 million years mean when the whole history of governments, the very idea of governments, is subsumed into inconsequence by that span of time?”
― Sue Hubbell, Waiting for Aphrodite: Journeys into the Time Before Bones

“Got me as fussed as a fart in a mitten.”
― Sue Hubbell, A Country Year: Living the Questions

“After we had loaded the last one, I backed the pickup around and drove down the twisting road to the big truck. As we rounded the final curve, we noticed there was a strange pickup parked near the U-Haul. Two men got out of it and looked around furtively, but did not see us. They tiptoed over to the truck, their curiosity piqued by an apparently abandoned U-Haul. They tried the sliding back door gingerly, and found it would open. They gave it a push. The loose bees inside rushed out toward the light and enveloped the two men in a furious buzzing cloud. The men were both heavy, with ample beer bellies, but they ran like jackrabbits to their pickup and drove off at top speed, careening from one side of the road to the other as they tried to brush bees from their heads. I’ll wager that is the last time either of them meddled with an abandoned truck.”
― Sue Hubbell, A Book of Bees

“Like many beekeepers, I have discovered a dose of bee venom from a sting alleviates the symptoms of arthritis,”
― Sue Hubbell, A Book of Bees

“Sparkling fair weather like that makes me think up outside work to do—work that didn’t seem strictly necessary the day before, during a snowstorm. On those days, I’ll sometimes pack up a lunch, fix a thermos of coffee and drive around to my beeyards to see how the bees are wintering. It is good to assure myself that all the telescoping covers are tightly in place, and to check whether cows have knocked over any hives. But the truth is I just miss the bees, and I want to see them. The snow has drifted up against the hives, and I stoop to brush it away from the entrances. In one yard, a tree limb has fallen across a hive, knocking the cover askew. I haul off the limb, adjust the cover.”
― Sue Hubbell, A Book of Bees

“Bees have a keen and precise sense of place. When they fly out of their hives, they commit to their memories an exact picture of all the significant landmarks near it. It is such a careful picture that if their hive is moved even ten feet away, their home is as good as lost to the returning foragers. And because their map of a foraging area—perhaps five square miles—is so accurate, a beekeeper who wants to relocate a given beeyard in the same general area must first move the bees at least ten or fifteen miles away and leave them for a week or so until they forget the map of the original location by learning a new one. After that, he can move them back to a spot he prefers near the old location.”
― Sue Hubbell, A Book of Bees

“long ago gave up a number of beekeeping practices conceived with the notion of making bees do certain things that seemed good from a human standpoint but which usually involved radically disrupting the hive. Instead, I watch the bees more, try to understand what they are doing and then see if I can work in a way that will be in keeping with their biology and behavior. I try to create conditions that will make them happy, and then leave them alone as much as possible.”
― Sue Hubbell, A Book of Bees

“Today my life has frogs aplenty and this delights me, but I am not so pleased with myself. My life hasn’t turned out as I expected it would, for one thing. For another, I no longer know all about anything. I don’t even know the first thing about frogs, for instance.”
― Sue Hubbell, A Country Year: Living the Questions

“Pastry for double-crust, 9-inch pie ¾ cup sugar 1 teaspoon nutmeg Enough pared and sliced apples to fill a 9-inch pie generously 1 ½ tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces ½ cup liquid honey 1 tablespoon grated orange rind Confectioners’ sugar Preheat oven to 425° F. Prepare pastry sufficient for a double-crust, 9-inch pie. Roll out half the dough and line the pie plate. Combine sugar and nutmeg; pour over apples, lifting and tossing with two forks until well combined. Pile fruit into pie pan, heaping to make a nice fat pie, and dot with butter. Roll out remaining pastry and cut into ½-inch strips. Arrange strips lattice fashion over apples, pressing edges down firmly. Bake 10 minutes, then lower the oven temperature to 350°F. Bake 30–40 minutes more, or until apples are tender and crust is brown. Remove from oven. Combine honey and orange rind, and pour mixture through openings in lattice; return pie to oven and bake another 5 minutes. Cool to lukewarm and dredge with confectioners’ sugar. Serve warm or cold.”
― Sue Hubbell, A Book of Bees

“Los visitantes con esperanzas puestas en el comercio apícola me resultan interesantes y conmovedores; muchos son jóvenes y despiertan a la madre que hay en mí. Suelen tener trabajos aburridos que detestan, y la idea de poseer una granja con abejas en el campo es para ellos una fantasía reconfortante. Procuro no desanimarlos, pero a veces no me queda más remedio. En estos tiempos, casi cualquier tipo de trabajo rural condena a los novatos a la bancarrota.”
― Sue Hubbell

“solid because the bees inside”
― Sue Hubbell, A Book of Bees

“discovered a classification Jorge Luis Borges devised, claiming that A certain Chinese encyclopedia divides animals into: a. Belonging to the Emperor b. Embalmed c. Tame d. Sucking pigs e. Sirens f. Fabulous g. Stray dogs h. Included in the present classification i. Frenzied j. Innumerable k. Drawn with a very fine camel-hair brush l. Et cetera m. Having just broken the water pitcher n. That from a long way off look like flies.”
― Sue Hubbell, Starting Over: A Country Year and A Book of Bees

“Last week I was in St. Louis and went to a party with friends. When some people there learned that I lived in the country, they asked me about brown recluse spiders. Having recently been bitten and read up on the topic, I jumped right in, telling them rather more than they wanted to know about the infrequency and usual mildness of the bites and the shy nature of the little spider. What they wanted to hear more about was the part where the skin rots off. After scaring themselves deliciously for a while, several of them decided to cancel plans for a weekend in the Ozarks, and I realized that one of the major points in the favor of brown recluse spiders is that they help keep down the tourists.”
― Sue Hubbell, A Country Year: Living the Questions

“Buying a hive of bees is, in some ways, like buying an Irish Setter puppy: it changes one’s life. But having two, or even three, hives of bees is not like having two or three Irish Setter puppies. The first hive is a Big Deal. The additional ones are not.”
― Sue Hubbell, A Book of Bees

“LO QUE RESIDE AQUÍ ME ES AJENO
BROTAN LÁGRIMAS PORQUE NO LO MEREZCO
Y ME SIENTO AFORTUNADO”

Koan de un poeta japonés anónimo.”
― Sue Hubbell, A Country Year

“Una casa es demasiado pequeña, demasiado restrictiva. Quiero el mundo entero, y también las estrellas.”
― Sue Hubbell, A Country Year

“Karl von Frisch, Nobelist, zoologist and student of bee behavior, discovered that it helped bees to find their own hives if those placed in a row were painted different colors; in addition, he found that they rather fancied blue. When I was traveling in Mexico I was delighted to see beehives painted in deep vibrant colors—red, green, blue and black.”
― Sue Hubbell, A Book of Bees

“We humans are a minority of giants stumbling around in the world of little things.”
― Sue Hubbell, Waiting for Aphrodite: Journeys into the Time Before Bones

“Vivir en un mundo donde las respuestas a las preguntas pueden ser tantas y tan buenas es lo que me hace salir de la cama y calzarme las botas cada mañana.”
― Sue Hubbell, A Country Year

“It is satisfying, of course, to build up a supply of winter warmth, free except for the labor. But there is also something heady about becoming a part of the forest process. It sounds straightforward enough to say that when I cut firewood I cull and thin my woods, but that puts me in the business of deciding which trees should be encouraged and which should be taken. I like my great tall black walnut, so I have cut the trees around it to give it the space and light it needs to grow generously. Dogwoods don’t care. They frost the woods with white blossoms in the spring, and grow extravagantly in close company. If I clear a patch, within a year or two pine seedlings move in, grow up exuberantly, compete and thin themselves to tolerable spacing. If I don’t cut a diseased tree, its neighbors may sicken and die. If I cut away one half of a forked white oak, the remaining trunk will grow straight and sturdy. Sap gone, a standing dead tree like the one I cut today will make good firewood, and so invites cutting. But if I leave it, it will make a home for woodpeckers, and later for flying squirrels and screech owls. Where I leave a brush pile of top branches, rabbits make a home. If I leave a fallen tree, others will benefit: ants, spiders, beetles and wood roaches will use it for shelter and food, and lovely delicate fungi will grow out of it before it mixes with leaf mold to become a part of a new layer of soil. One person with a chain saw makes a difference in the woods, and by making a difference becomes part of the woodland cycle, a part of the abstraction that is the forest community.”
― Sue Hubbell, A Country Year: Living the Questions

“Vivimo en un mundo que no sólo es más extraño de lo que pensamos, sino más extraño de lo que podemos pensar."

Sir James Hopwood Jeans”
― Sue Hubbell, A Country Year

“(...) Y nosotros aquí, en nuestro mundo, aburridísimo en comparación, pensando que lo sabemos y que lo vemos todo."

Robert Crawford”
― Sue Hubbell, A Country Year

“I’ve come to the belief that we manufacture whatever immortal souls we have out of the bits of difference we make by living in this world.”
― Sue Hubbell, A Book of Bees

“Lo que reside aquí me es ajeno
Brotan lágrimas porque no lo merezco
Y me siento afortunado.”
― Sue Hubbell, A Country Year