The Keeper of The Bees

by Gene Stratton-Porter

There should not be anything, unless it might be the love of God, that would be bigger and higher and holier in the heart of a man than to be the groom of his chosen bride, in ordinary circumstances.

One of the reasons I’d like to live is that I might go on further in what I am trying to teach that particular youngster about the keeping of bees and, incidentally, about the keeping of a soul that I happen to believe is immortal. Anything my partner has gotten from me will do no damage. In fact, I have a feeling that the damaging things of this world are going to go past a mind that is fully occupied with something legitimate and constructive.

he was thinking about life instead of death.

“The bee garden is blue because blue is the ‘perfect color’ and bees are the most perfect of any insect in the way they live, and the most valuable on account of the work they do, and so blue would be the color they love best, and it is! If you don’t believe it, watch them. And because why—the nearest we come to a perfect insect loves a perfect color best, why, that’s because God made them as they are!”

“One time I asked the Bee Master if I couldn’t see God and if I couldn’t touch Him, how I was going to know that He was here. And he said, ‘Because of the hair on a bee.’ So that’s one of the ways you can know.

He says the only name for that Master Mind is God. He doesn’t see any use in trying to dodge God and side-step Him and call Him ‘the Spirit of the Hive’ and lnstinct and Nature and things like that.

He says when God does anything ‘with such care, and puts so much thought in it, and deals out such splendid justice’ as there is in a beehive, that a wise man will just take off his hat and lift his eyes to the sky and very politely he will say, ‘Just God.’”