Honeybees Quotes

“For better or worse, honeybees are often much too busy to be bothered with personal reflection.”
― Susan Brackney, Plan Bee: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Hardest-Working Creatures on the Planet

“Life is but a flash of time, a momentous flicker-- in the life that we know and space we live in on earth.© VW”
― Virginia Wright, Buzzzzzzzz...: What Honeybees Do

“...she’d found she couldn’t bring herself to kill any of her bees, which was the system all the northern demesnes used, and so had to get them through the winter somehow. She’d been cold that winter herself, after wrapping up her most exposed hives in all the blankets she had.”
― Robin McKinley, Chalice

“Water— plain water from the Ladywell— and a spoonful of honey, Master.” She was sure— she was almost sure— she did not imagine it that he smiled. And it was only after her answer that she felt him begin to draw the cup toward himself. Still he did not— or could not— bear its weight, and so she carried it for him. Together they made only a faint gesture of holding it above his head, for the audience to see; and then she tipped it gently against his mouth, and saw him drink.”
― Robin McKinley, Chalice

“But her curiosity got the better of her and at last she went back to where she’d left a big shallow basin of milk only the day before…and found the surface of the milk invisible under a carpet of her bees. “Bees don’t drink milk,” she said to them. When they lifted and flew away the basin was empty and clean.”
― Robin McKinley, Chalice

“The fun part is finding which thoughts, in that crazy beehive of emotion, are the ones that mass produce the honey.”
― Curtis Tyrone Jones

“Protect us bees,
Don’t burn our hives.
Protect us bees
And spare our lives.
We pollinate trees,
And now you know,
Without us bees,
Some plants won’t grow.”
― Wayne Gerard Trotman, The Last Honey Bee

“If neonicotinoids are the answer, what was the question?”
― June Stoyer

“I don’t remember the particulars but when he [Dr. Hichiro Shimanuki, aka ‘Shim’] was nearly finished he offered an observation that was, for the most part, missed by the majority of those present. … Answers and dogma, went the feeling, saves bees, money, and time. … Shim’s observations were, however, profound, and any beekeeper who listened carefully to his challenge is probably doing quite well today.

Basically, his observation was this: He called it the Rule of Rights. — If you produce the right number of bees that are the right age and the right condition, and are in the right place at the right time, you will be successful.

The complexity of achieving this goal is well hidden in the simplicity of his statement. But to accomplish this requires making intelligent and correct decisions based on sound planning, correct timing, and getting the balance of business and biology to work in an operation. There’s little how-to hidden within this simple statement. Rather, it is a goal to strive for in many ways. It is, in the real world, not easy and it is not often that it will be achieved.

[From the ‘Introduction.’]”
― Kim Flottum, Better Beekeeping: The Ultimate Guide to Keeping Stronger Colonies and Healthier, More Productive Bees

“Honeybees possess amazing numerical skills that rival those of many vertebrates. Honeybees have a reputation of being insect geniuses: not only can they enumerate and order numbers, but they also possess elaborate working memory to ponder about upcoming decisions, understand abstract concepts such as 'sameness' and 'difference', and learn intricate skills from other bees. And they achieve all of this with fewer than one million neurons.”
― Andreas Nieder, A Brain for Numbers: The Biology of the Number Instinct

“Did you know that honey bees came over with the Pilgrims? They are not recognized as citizens but corporations are!”
― June Stoyer

“The honeybee makes the honey, and the dirty fly makes the dirt. Which, whatever is that reflects itself.
If the dirty fly goes anywhere, makes the dirt while the honeybee makes the honey. In that context that the squeeze of our mental, intellectual, character and morals comes to our eyes, is the evil people. It is the essence of our nation, and we shall have to taste that until we are not as the honeybee.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“If financial gain remains our main motive then we can be certain that rich fathers will leave behind poor sons!”
― Gunther Hauk, Toward Saving the Honeybee

“As the honey bees land on flowers and fruits, to sip nectar from that for producing honey; it shows its nature. Similarly, sober and qualified figures, follow visionary subjects and objects, to beautify and purify its vision; it mirrors intellect.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“He decided to take the C downtown and fumbled through blizzardy wind to Central Park West. Once there, he stepped inside the park. The wind dropped magically away. In the stillness, Gregory noticed that every twig and branch held a delicate stack of snow. Snow swarmed like honeybees in the golden glow of the old-fashioned streetlamps; it slathered tree trunks and sparkled like crushed diamonds at his feet. He heard a whispering noise and saw two people glide from among the trees on cross-country skis. A lavender lunar radiance filled the park. It was a world from childhood: castles and forests and magic lamps and princes scaling walls of brambles.”
― Jennifer Egan, The Candy House

“Honey bees provide honey; therefore, have importance and value; otherwise, those were just like the flies as other normal flies. People bear, even the bite of bees, only for honey; similarly, such human, who becomes beneficial, to others, stays magnificent and valuable; diversely, no one notices that. However, it falls under the slavery of selfishness; such slaves, one doesn't need searching since that, exist everywhere.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“As honey bees dare to suck the nectar of the flowers and juice of fruits to store for honey; similarly, such a process accrues between a lover and beloved to crown for love”
― Ehsan Sehgal