Quotes & Sayings About Honey Bees

When you go in search of honey, you must expect to be stung by bees. — Joseph Joubert

There was an inexhaustible source of clouds in some land far to the north. Decisive people, minds fixed on the task, clothed in thick, gray uniforms, working silently from morning to night to make clouds, like bees make honey, spiders make webs, and war makes widows. — Haruki Murakami

I mean, I feel like you get more bees with honey. But that doesn't mean I don't get frustrated in my life. — Beyonce Knowles

A sum of money is a leading character in this tale about people, just as a sum of honey might properly be a leading character in a tale about bees. — Kurt Vonnegut

She blinks furiously, trying to dredge up some more moisture from her now dry-baked tear ducts. Two of the shapes resolve. One is Selkirk, on her side on the floor of the lab, her legs jackknifing in furious staccato. The other is a hungry which is kneeling astride her, stuffing her spilled intestines into its mouth in pink, sagging coils. More hungries surge in from all sides, hiding Selkirk from view. She's a honey-pot for putrescent bees. The last Justineau sees of her is her inconsolable face. Melanie! — M.R. Carey

But bees that hae honey in their mouths hae stings in their tails, aye?' He — Diana Gabaldon

The greatest religion gives suffering to nobody," reads a weather-beaten sign, quoting the Buddha, at Chele La pass, the highest motorable point in the country, near Paro. This maxim is everywhere evident. As a Bhutanese friend and I walked in the mountains one afternoon, he reflexively removed insects from the path and gently placed them in the verge, out of harm's way. Early one morning in Thimphu, I saw a group of young schoolboys, in their spotless white-sleeved ghos, crouching over a mouse on the street, gently offering it food. In Bhutan, the horses that trudge up the steep trail to the Tiger's Nest monastery are reserved for out-of-shape tourists; Bhutanese don't consider horses beasts of burden and prefer not to make them suffer under heavy loads. Even harvesting honey is considered a sign of disrespect for the industrious bees; my young guide, Kezang, admonished me for buying a bottle of Bhutanese honey to take home. (Chastened, I left it there.) In — Madeline Drexler

Women are the most charitable creatures, and the most troublesome. He who shuns women passes up the trouble, but also the benefits. He who puts up with them gains the benefits, but also the trouble. As the saying goes, there's no honey without bees. — Niccolo Machiavelli

Hebe's here, May is here!
The air is fresh and sunny;
And the miser-bees are busy
Hoarding golden honey. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

It was like a great bee come home from some field where the honey is full of poison wildness, of insanity and nightmare, its body crammed with that over-rich nectar and now it was sleeping the evil out of itself. — Ray Bradbury

The bees pillage the flowers here and there but they make honey of them which is all their own; it is no longer thyme or marjolaine: so the pieces borrowed from others he will transform and mix up into a work all his own. — Michel De Montaigne

When all is said and done, how do we not know but that our own unreason may be better than another's truth? for it has been warmed on our hearths and in our souls, and is ready for the wild bees of truth to hive in it, and make their sweet honey. Come into the world again, wild bees, wild bees! — W.B.Yeats

He who does not attempt to make peace / When small discords arise, / Is like the bee's hive which leaks drops of honey / Soon, the whole hive collapses. — Akkineni Nagarjuna

The honey is sweet, but the Bee stings. — George Herbert

Change blows through the branches of our existence. It fortifies the roots on which we stand, infuses crimson experience with autumn hues, dismantles Winter's brittle leaves, and ushers Spring into our fertile environments. Seeds of evolution burst from their pod cocoons and teardrop buds blossom into Summer flowers. Change releases its redolent scent, attracting the buzz of honey bees and the adoration of discerning butterflies. — B.G. Bowers

The class of dishonest bees which I have been describing, may be termed the "Jerry Sneaks" of their profession, and after they have followed it for some time, they lose all disposition for honest pursuits, and assume a hang-dog sort of look, which is very peculiar. Constantly employed in creeping into small holes, and daubing themselves with honey, they often lose all the bright feathers and silky plumes which once so beautifully adorned their bodies, and assume a smooth and almost black appearance; just as the hat of the thievish loafer, acquires a "seedy" aspect, and his garments, a shining and threadbare look. — L.L. Langstroth

These attributes, in spite of poverty and the strict integrity which shut him out from the more worldly successes, attracted to him many admirable persons, as naturally as sweet herbs draw bees, and as naturally he gave them the honey into which fifty years of hard experience had distilled no bitter drop. — Louisa May Alcott

Littlefinger looked like a boy who had just taken a furtive bite from a honeycomb. He was TRYING to watch for bees, but the honey was so sweet. — George R R Martin

It takes a bee to get the honey out — Arthur Guiterman

Bees are excellent engineers, better than even you. They are are hard workers...They are as brave as Indian warriors. And they make honey. Far better than humans, my friend. — Luis Alberto Urrea

A sound of laughter was heard-they turned sharply. Vera Claythorne was standing in the yard. She cried out in a high shrill voice, shaken with wild bursts of laughter:
"Do they keep bees on this island? Tell me that. Where do we go for honey? Ha! ha!"
They stared at her uncomprehendingly. It was as though the sane well-balanced girl had gone mad right before their eyes. She went on in that high unnatural voice:
"Don't stare like that! As though you thought I was mad. It's sane enough what I'm asking. Bees, hives, bees! Oh, don't you understand? Haven't you read that idiotic rhyme? It's up in all of your bedrooms-put it there for you to study! We might have come here straightaway if we'd had sense. Seven little soldiers chopping up sticks. And the next verse, I know the whole thing by heart, I tell you! Six little soldier boys playing with a hive. And that's why I'm asking-do they keep bees on this island- isn't it damned funny ... ? — Agatha Christie

Again let us dream where the land lies sunny And live, like the bees, on our hearts' old honey, Away from the world that slaves for money
Come, journey the way with me. — Madison Cawein

The beautiful laws of time and space, once dislocated by our inaptitude, are holes and dens. If the hive be disturbed by rash and stupid hands, instead of honey, it will yield us bees. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The bee that hath honey in her mouth hath a sting in her tail. — John Lyly

In Spain, hilly terrain and antiquated planting and harvest practices keep farmers from retrieving more than about 100 pounds [of almonds] per acre. Growers in the Central Valley, by contrast can expect up to 3000 pounds an acre. But for all their sophisticated strategies to increase yield and profitability, almond growers still have one major problem - pollination. Unless a bird or insect brings the pollen from flower to flower, even the most state-of-the-art orchard won't grow enough nuts. An almond grower who depends on wind and a few volunteer pollinators in this desert of cultivation can expect only 40 pounds of almonds per acre. If he imports honey bees, the average yield is 2,400 pounds per acre, as much as 3,000 in more densely planted orchards. To build an almond, it takes a bee. — Hannah Nordhaus

He is not worthy of the honey-comb, that shuns the hives because the bees have stings. — William Shakespeare

I dreamt
marvellous error!
that I had a beehive here inside my heart. And the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures. — Antonio Machado

Flies can be sitting in a garden and completely ignore the beautiful flowers around them. Instead they'll go right for the rotting banana peel or piece of trash. Bees, on the other hand, could be sitting in a room full of trash and find the tiniest speck of fruit or honey to land on. Don't be a fly. Become a bee and stay a bee. Look for the good in every circumstance, even the most horrible and disgusting places. There's always some honey to land on. — Marilyn Grey

I prefer to get fat on honey. — Stefanie Brook Trout

I make a show of straightening my glasses and motion to myself. I mean, you put out the honey, you're going to get some bees. — Christina Lauren

Long ago Apollo called to Aristaeus, youngest of the shepherds, Saying, "I will make you keeper of my bees." Golden were the hives, and golden was the honey; golden, too, the music, Where the honey-makers hummed among the trees. — Henry Van Dyke

Bees sip honey from flowers and hum their thanks when they leave. The gaudy butterfly is sure that the flowers owe thanks to him. — Rabindranath Tagore

The dog that buried the bone which even a canine appetite could not manage, the squirrel that gathered nuts for a later feast, the bees that filled the comb with honey, the ants that laid up stores for a rainy day - these were among the first creators of civilization. It was they ... who taught our ancestors the art of providing for tomorrow out of the surplus of today, or of preparing for winter in summer's time of plenty. — Will Durant

Just as the seasons change and the honey bees pollinate the planet and make honey, we are also doing exactly what we are supposed to be doing. We also are apart of nature, certainly not separate from nature. — Bryan Kest

The Honey is sweet, but the Bee has a Sting. — Benjamin Franklin

For the poets tell us, don't they, that the melodies they bring us are gathered from rills that run with honey, out of glens and gardens of the Muses, and they bring them as bees do honey, flying like the bees? And what they say is true, for a poet is a light and winged thing, and holy, and never able to compose until he has become inspired, and is beside himself, and reason is no longer in him. So long as he has this in his possession, no man is able to make poetry or to chant in prophecy. — Plato

The would-bees take their honey from the flowers of creation. — Herbert Gold

We are the bees of the invisible. We gather the honey of the visible, and store it in the great golden honeycomb of the invisible. — Rainer Maria Rilke

The little bee returns with evening's gloom, To join her comrades in the braided hive, Where, housed beside their might honey-comb, They dream their polity shall long survive. — Charles Tennyson Turner

Sunflowers waiting for the sunshine. Violets just waiting for dew. Bees just waiting for honey And honey, I'm just waiting for you! — Mitch Albom

Consider the farmer who sprays his fields with insecticide to kill the bugs that are damaging his crops. He kills thousands of harmless insects as well, including some that actually do good, such as bees that pollinate the flowers and give us honey. Creatures that feed on insects, especially birds, also get sick and die. In the end, because the poisonous chemicals get widely distributed, humans may become sick, too. — Jane Goodall

Well for the drones of the social hive that there are bees of an industrious turn, willing, for an infinitesimal share of the honey, to undertake the labor of its fabrication. — Thomas Hood

Coat your words with honey if you want to catch bees. — Matshona Dhliwayo

For so work the honey bees, creatures that by a rule in nature teach the act of order to a peopled kingdom. — William Shakespeare

We think we can make honey without sharing in the fate of bees, but we are in truth nothing but poor bees, destined to accomplish our task and then die. — Muriel Barbery

All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair -
The bees are stirring - birds are on the wing -
And Winter, slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
And I, the while, the sole unbusy thing,
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.
Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow,
Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow.
Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may,
For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away!
With lips unbrighten'd, wreathless brow, I stroll:
And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?
Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And Hope without an object cannot live. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

If, for example, a drone bee in a hive has decided to lay down on its brothers and only do a half job, does Mother Nature agree and find a part time work for the special bee? She does not. She impresses the other bees, who are working hard to collect the honey and fill the hive, to send their soldiers after the drone. It is politely marched outside and stung to death. Nature destroys a lazy bee. — Raymond Holliwell

Droughts especially appear to have accompanied the spirits of the dead in bee-form, and for this reason the honey offering was almost always customary in rain-magic, and the power of predicting rain was attributed to the bee. — Hilda M. Ransome

Man is a thief, an impudent thief! He steals honey from bees, eggs from chickens, milk from cows and life from the God! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

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

I don't mind bees and think we are all the better for having them around. I like the taste of honey. — Henry Rollins

The keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams. — Henry David Thoreau

I feel like you get more bees with honey. But that doesn't mean I don't get frustrated in my life. My way of dealing with frustration is to shut down and to think and speak logically. — Beyonce Knowles

Our followers are like bees which live among birds. None of the birds recognize the bees because of their small size and weakness. They would not treat them this way if they realized that these very small bees can carry honey which is very valuable in their stomachs. — Hazrat Ali Ibn Abu-Talib A.S

Everything about her was sweet, pale like honey. You would not have been surprised to see a bee caught in the tangles of that yellow hair. — Katherine Mansfield

Like the bees, we are - only looking for sweet honey in the flowers, we are -
sensitive and at the same time carefully;
but we never destroy them. — Kristian Goldmund Aumann

Honey bees are amazing creatures. I mean, think about it, do earwigs make chutney? — Eddie Izzard

But there is an important difference, and that important difference was manifested in Colin's throbbing pain. Bees sting people only once, and then die. Hornets, on the other hand, can sting repeatedly. Also, hornets, at least the way Colin figured it, are meaner. Bees just want to make honey. Hornets want to kill you. — John Green

Curiosity killed the cat, but not before teaching her that honey bees are not sweet, tweeting birds are slow to react, mice can serve as both toys and food, big dogs like to snuggle, falling isn't flying, cream drips from lazy cows, water should be avoided at all costs, baths don't require getting wet, kindness and cruelty often fall from the same hand, and engines remain comfortably warm long after the motor dies. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Focus on the roses: 'A person who gathers honey will not escape being stung by bees. A person who gathers roses will not escape being scratched by thorns.' The positive things in life also have negative aspects. Keep your focus on the beautiful roses of the world, and the thorns will seem trivial and inconsequential. — Zelig Pliskin

Do you want honey? We have fresh honey from local bees. Did you know that it's better to eat honey from local bees? — Rainbow Rowell

I am a wheel. As I rise, Sweetheart, I carry you along with me, a heady, dizzying spin toward the sweet oceans of eternity. On wings of flames we sink into the sea of love. May be burn forever like bees in honey. Who does not wish for that delirium to last forever? — Rikki Ducornet

When all is said and done, how do we know but that our own unreason may be better than another's truth? for it has been warmed on our hearths and in our souls, and is ready for the wild bees of truth to hive in it, and make their sweet honey. — William Butler Yeats

Oh no, hon we were too late. Tiger-boy done pissed down the wrong honey tree and got all the bees, or in this case, bears, going wild. (Fury) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Do the bees know they make the honey for you? Or do they work tirelessly because they think it is their own choice? Have you never noticed that, after hearing a new word for the first time in your life, you'll hear it again within twenty-four hours? Do you ever wonder why sometimes you'll see a single shoe lying along the road? — David Wong

out-of-doors there was quite a snow-storm. "It is the white bees that are swarming," said Kay's old grandmother. "Do the white bees choose a queen?" asked the little boy; for he knew that the honey-bees always have one. "Yes," said the grandmother, "she flies where the swarm hangs in the thickest clusters. She is the largest of all; and she can never remain quietly on the earth, but goes up again into the black clouds. Many a winter's night she flies through the streets of the town, and peeps in at the windows; and they then freeze in so wondrous a manner that they look like flowers. — Hans Christian Andersen

The bees are very attentive to the flowers until their honey is done, and then they fly over them. I don't know if the flowers feel grateful to the bees, they are great fools if they do. — Olive Schreiner

Many verses of the holy books, above all the Upanishads of Sama-Veda spoke of this innermost thing. It is written: "Your soul is the whole world." It says that when a man is asleep, he penetrates his innermost and dwells in Atman. There was wonderful wisdom in these verses; all the knowledge of the sages was told here in enchanting language, pure as honey collected by the bees. — Hermann Hesse

The Etymologiae says that bees are virtuous because they are much loved by all, and sought after with great longing by everyone, because their honey tastes as sweet in the mouths of paupers as in the mouths of kings. Do you think that's logical? That a creature can be virtuous just because it is loved and sought after, that the act of being loved, of being sought after, even if it is passive, is equal to an act of martyrdom or great piety, which is active? That it can confer grace to a whole species? — Catherynne M Valente

It is the goodly outside that sin puts on which tempteth to destruction. It has been said that sin is like the bee, with honey in its mouth, but a sting in its tail. — Hosea Ballou

Honey does not lose its sweetness because it is made by bees that sting. — Matshona Dhliwayo

My anger mounted. "What about your son and me? What about us? How can you even think of leaving me alone here with our baby boy? Telemachus needs his father. What's going to happen to us if you leave? Who will help me raise him? Who will take care of us? You know as well as I do some of the men around here are nothing but a bunch of scoundrels. Mark my words, Odysseus. The second you're gone, they'll swarm in here like bees around honey. They'll take over the place. I won't be able to do a thing to stop them. — Tamara Agha-Jaffar

Keep away from her, said Ameer Merchant, but once the inexorable dynamic of the mythic has been set in motion, you might as well try and keep bees from honey, crooks from money, politicians from babies, philosophers from maybes. Vina had her hooks in me, and the consequence was the story of my life. — Salman Rushdie

Even the bees I'd swear were sent to protect us in the delicate business of hives and honey are stung to silence by the news that something winged has lost its flight. — Kristen Henderson

When you're out to get the honey you don't go killing all the bees — Joe Strummer

It was true. Sugar did treat her bees like next of kin but then again, they were.
Along with her manners, the accent she tried so hard to soften, a single china cup covered in blue daisies and a weathered box of essential oils, they were all she carried with her from her past. Her bees relied on her for shelter and food but she relied on them too. She made her living from their honey, not just the healthful liquid itself but from the salves and gels and tinctures and remedies she created and sold at farm stands or farmers' markets wherever she lived.
It was the most symbiotic of relationships. — Sarah-Kate Lynch

Here's the secret that every successful software company is based on: You can domesticate programmers the way beekeepers tame bees. You can't exactly communicate with them, but you can get them to swarm in one place and when they're not looking, you can carry off the honey. — Orson Scott Card

Imagine spending four billion years stocking the oceans with seafood, filling the ground with fossil fuels, and drilling the bees in honey production - only to produce a race of bed-wetters! — Barbara Ehrenreich

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, which has no intrinsic value. There is more real wealth in a pound of honey, or a load of manure for that matter, than all the currency in the world. We often destroy the world's real wealth to create an illusion of wealth, confusing symbol and substance. - William Longgood, The Queen Must Die — Susan Wiggs

So on one hand, honey is an amazingly sophisticated and efficient food source. On the other hand, it's bee backwash. — Alton Brown

No honey for me, if it comes with a bee. — Sappho

Grampa took Mary Ellen inside away from the crowd. "Now, child, I am going to show you what my father showed me, and his father before," he said quietly. He spooned the honey onto the cover of one of her books. "Taste," he said, almost in a whisper ... "There is such sweetness inside of that book too!" he said thoughtfully. "Such things ... adventure, knowledge and wisdom. But these things do not come easily. You have to pursue them. Just like we ran after the bees to find their tree, so you must also chase these things through the pages of a book! — Patricia Polacco

We are continually overflowing toward those who preceded us, toward our origin, and toward those who seemingly come after us ... It is our task to imprint this temporary, perishable earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its essence can rise again "invisibly," inside us. We are the bees of the invisible. We wildly collect the honey of the visible, to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible. — Rainer Maria Rilke

CII ABBOT PASTOR said: Just as bees are driven out by smoke, and their honey is taken away from them, so a life of ease drives out the fear of the Lord from man's soul and takes away all his good works. — Thomas Merton

Conceive the condition of the human mind if all propositions whatsoever were self-evident except one, which was to become self-evident at the close of a summer's day, but in the meantime might be the subject of question, of hypothesis, of debate. Art and philosophy, literature and science, would fasten like bees on that one proposition which had the honey of probability in it, and be the more eager because their enjoyment would end with sunset. Our impulses, our spiritual activities, no more adjust themselves to the idea of their future nullity, than the beating of our heart, or the irritability of our muscles. — George Eliot

It is the honey which makes us cruel enough to ignore the death of a bee — Munia Khan

Just as bees make honey from thyme, the strongest and driest of herbs, so do the wise profit from the most difficult of experiences. — Plato

We are bees then; our honey is language. — Robert Bly

When you see honey in the bush and there are no sign of bees, flee!! for its all but a trap — Ikechukwu Izuakor

The flowers are full of honey, but only the bee finds out the sweetness. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The train station - busy, swarming with people, luggage, porters, taxi drivers and limousine chauffeurs - a giant honeycomb, with worker bees flying in and out, carrying the trash, which covers the entire floor, in and out of the building. Only the honey has been consumed by the selected few, and nothing but the mucus remains. The line - a monstrous larva - the line stretches from the information window and extends almost out of the door. A human worm - hundreds of legs and hands, twisting and breathing disease. What was I thinking? This is just a city like any other, a city with its inhabitants, always busy, from the morning until the nighttime, always itching for a fight, always ready to chew me up and spit me out. A stripped and ragged bone, tossed aside when I can no longer feed its hungry belly. The belly of a beast - a human beast - merciless, yet placatory on the surface. I light a cigarette, spit on the floor, and walk towards the daylight. — Henry Martin

Because of the varroa mite, wild honey bees are now, for all practical purposes, extinct in the United States. — Hannah Nordhaus

My bees cannot sting." "You mean they haven't stung anyone yet." "Is there a difference?" "What do you do with the honey?" "What honey?" "From the bees." U Ba looked at me. "I wouldn't touch it. It belongs to the bees. — Jan-Philipp Sendker

The human species was not born into a market economy. Bees won't sell you honey if you offer them an electronic funds transfer. The human species imagined money into existence, and it exists - for us, not mice or wasps - because we go on believing in it. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

God made bees, and bees made honey, God made man, and man made money, Pride made the devil, and the devil made sin; So God made a cole-pit to put the devil in. — William Cowper

As the bee collecteth honey with great zest, so the fool collecteth wealth. — Kabir

This, I thought, was why the bees and birds landed on him--he clearly had a whole world inside him with rivers of honey and a heart made from flowers. Bernard was just like a closed bud, an acorn with a tree inside, a song yet to be heard. — Michelle Cuevas

If honey bees become extinct, human society will follow in four years. — Albert Einstein

Logan was her entire world and she was his. She could taste the raw honey and bits of bees still on his tongue. She enjoyed the sweet flavor and kept her promise of kissing him even though he was a bug-eating bear. — Jess Hayek

Do not grumble that bees sting;
rejoice that they make honey. — Matshona Dhliwayo