Bees Quotes

“Our hands have held the life of every atom, and our eyes read the stories, of each soul. Our mouths have spoken words, as old as speaking, and our feet have walked through the centuries of old. Our essence has embraced so many others, from the bumbling bees, to the comets in the skies. Star dust, is the stuff, of which we’re made of, and there ain’t enough words around, to describe.”
― Hendrith Smith, The Wealth Reference Guide: An American Classic

“I
Have a self to recover, a queen.
Is she dead, is she sleeping?
Where has she been,
With her lion-red body, her wings of glass?

Now she is flying
More terrible than she ever was, red
Scar in the sky, red comet
Over the engine that killed her—
The mausoleum, the wax house.”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“Bees - Bees helps feeding entire species
on Mother Earth by pollinating crops,
wild plants and cultivated plants.

v/s

Humans - We mostly gather and relish on these foods
and crops, hardly caring to plant a single flower
as a return gift for our humble bees to feed on.

Go Garden! Bee a Human! Save Bees! Save Food for Our Generations to Come!”
― RESHMA CHEKNATH UMESH, DEAR READER BY JULIE

“If a person sees a beehive, and has not seen one previously, he will become bewildered because he does not understand who made it. If he then learns that it is the work of the bee, he will be bewildered again by how this weak creature makes these hexagons, the likes of which a skilled engineer would be unable to make with a compass and ruler.”
― Zakariya al-Qazwini

“The bees are dying and humans are not far behind.”
― Steven Magee

“What is the Imago Dei, the Image of God? It’s a hive. God is the total hive, and we are all the hive cells. We are all mind bees, buzzing in our Singularity.”
― Thomas Stark, Base Reality: Ultimate Existence

“The wonder! The beauty! The love of it all!
Every act to save matters no matter how small.”
― H.D. Vesser, Sleeping BEE-auty: Bart's Big Book Of Bee

“You must feel the rustle of the leaves. You must feel the rumble of the clouds. The flowers sing their own songs. The bees create their own rhythm. The waves serenade with distinct notes. The breeze captivates in its own chords. And the moon mesmerizes in her own melodies. You must understand the symphony of nature.”
― Avijeet Das

“It became a game that I took to with immense gusto: to see how much I could remember about dandelions themselves, or picking wild grapes with my father and brother, rediscovering the mosquito-breeding ground rain barrel by the side bay window, or searching out the smell of the gold-fuzzed bees that hung around our back porch grape arbor. Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don't they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

“Our very human to simplify and seek one answer may explain our ongoing difficulty in recognizing impending synergy and acting before systems collapse. We are prone to accept death by a thousand little cuts, in which one degraded aspect of our environment or health becomes familiar and accepted as normal--and then another.”
― Mark L. Winston, Bee Time: Lessons from the Hive

“I caught her one day eating a bee. When she realized I was watching, she spit it out, saying the bee had flown into her mouth. But I knew that she ate bees. She would choose the ones that had drunk the most wisteria juice and keep them alive in her mouth for a moment, let them play a little before swallowing.”
― Mercè Rodoreda, Death in Spring

“In the evenings they would sometimes sit out in the garden and listen to the steady hum of the bees‘ industry and breathe in the honey in full flow. The Boys learnt how the different sounds from the hive denoted different moods, different activities, and that each worker, far from being a mere gatherer of nectar or builder of comb, carried out a whole host of duties at various points in her short life―a nursemaid to the larvae, a sentry to keep out robber bees, a carpet sweeper to keep the hive tidy, a punka-wallah when it got too hot.”
― Mick Jackson, Five Boys

“And the fields are complicated with flowers,
summer an insurrection of bees,
the days like clover petals'
pinpricks of nectar”
― Matthew Francis, The Mabinogi

“On one occasion, an ancient great-aunt of mine, hieratically assuming a head-dress of feather and globules of jet, required me to accompany her to the beehives. ‘But you surely don't need a hat, Aunt Jane! They're only at the end of the garden.’ ‘It is the custom,’ she said, grandly. ‘Put a scarf over your head.’ Arrived, she stood in silence for a moment. Then — ‘I have to tell you,’ she said, formally, ‘that King George V is dead. You may be sorry, but I am not. He was not an interesting man. Besides,’ she added — as though the bees needed the telling! — ‘everyone has to die’.”
― P.L. Travers, What the Bee Knows: Reflections on Myth, Symbol and Story

“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

“In my head, I am Zelda
and this is my party, but the truth is
it’s almost morning, truth is
I’m the worker bee and not the queen.”
― Kelli Russell Agodon, Dialogues with Rising Tides

“Oh Bees,” she says. “I send greetings to your Queen. I wish to be her friend, and to prepare a safe home for her, and for you who are her daughters, and to tell you the news every day. May you carry messages from the land of the living to all souls who dwell in the land of shadows. Please tell me now whether you accept my offer.”
― Margaret Atwood, MaddAddam

“There’s nothing like the first time ten thousand honeybees surround you. Not that a second time is any more charming, but it’s the sheer terror that grips one’s heart when such an encounter takes place for the first time. Words do not do justice to the experience as you can never convey to someone how nerve-racking it is to stand next to ten thousand honeybees looking to sting you. Yet, despite the sheer terror you experience, your heart threatening to jump out of your chest, you feel compelled to take a closer look;”
― Scott Proposki, Bee Focused: What Honeybees Can Teach Us About Change, Crisis, and Communication

“Bees make honey while the sun shines.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“If I could talk with bees and flowers, would our conversations be poetry? What about communication with ducks?”
― Jarod Kintz, One Out of Ten Dentists Agree: This Book Helps Fight Gingivitis. Maybe Tomorrow I’ll Ask Nine More Dentists.: A BearPaw Duck And Meme Farm Production

“If bees are willing to take their honey, they are unlikely
sting”
― JS Dirga, Saga Moon Poem

“maybe bees are sensitive, unusually sensitive, to all the negativity in the human world. Maybe they are connected to us in come essential way that we haven't figured out yet, and their death is a warning of some sort to us, like the canaries in a coal mine, sensitive to an emergency that will soon be apparent to dull, slow human beings.”
― Teju Cole, Open City

“BEES USE VERY LITTLE OF WHAT THEY PRODUCE AND LOOK WHAT HAPPENS TO THEM! DO YOU PRODUCE MORE THAN YOU NEED?”
― Vineet Raj Kapoor

“What were you listening to? Grime music?"
"A podcast about bees," says Poppy. "If they die, we're doomed, I'm afraid."
"Then I shall be more careful in future," says Elizabeth”
― Richard Osman, The Man Who Died Twice

“The bees produce
monofloral honey from linden trees.”
― Sneha Subramanian Kanta, Ghost Tracks

“I quickly shifted my gaze to the wallpaper, where it skimmed across the bright flowers and mischievous rabbits and landed on one of the bees in the print. I swear I saw its wings flutter. I reached out to touch it only to realize the bee was warm under my fingertip.
"Do you like the wallpaper?" Cora Bee asked. "Some people think it's too busy, too colorful, too much."
I turned to face Cora Bee. "It's not any of that. It's perfect."
Though her eyes were tired, haunted, she smiled. "I think you'll fit in around here just fine, Emme."
And I smiled, too, because I knew she wasn't lying.”
― Heather Webber, In the Middle of Hickory Lane

“I built a stone sittin' ledge around the natural spring, which I'm calling the gazing pool because it's mesmerizing. The bees love it, too. I often see them flying near it, and sometimes, and I know this sounds strange, they seem to take on a golden shimmer when they're near the water. I planted some ferns at the pool, too, because some believe ferns represent magic, and it sure feels magical out there to me.”
― Heather Webber, In the Middle of Hickory Lane

“Why'd your mother choose the name Glory? Is there meaning behind it?"
"I thought she had chosen it because morning glories represent mortal life, but Mama told me it was because there had been a golden light around me when I came back to Georgia. Said it looked like a full-body halo. Till the day she died, she said that light was because when Bee had gone to glory, glory had come to me."
It was impossible not to remember that the first time I saw Glory, I'd thought she glowed with light as well, as if her innate goodness shined for all to see.
"But I don't think it's some kind of halo at all," she said, "even though such a big piece of me died that night in this garden."
"What do you think it is?"
She glanced at a bee skimming the water of the gazing pool. "It's always reminded me of honey. Especially since I feel like the bees are looking out for me. I've felt their buzzing underfoot since that horrible night. It never went away. I like to think that the glow---and the buzzing---are their reminders that I'm safe now.”
― Heather Webber, In the Middle of Hickory Lane

“Do you perambulate at dawn?
The acacia on your right and the jacaranda on the road down the lane.

Mornings in Kathmandu are symphonies.
Tchaikovsky on a Monday, and Beethoven on a Saturday.

What voices speak to you?
Some days I hear the ghosts of extinct bees, and some days I hear the spirits of butterflies.

Today morning I read fragments from the writings of Kafka. Have you read the writings of Kierkegaard?”
― Avijeet Das

“American writer and biologist Frederick Kenyon (1867-1941) was the first to explore the inner workings of the bee brain. His 1896 study, in which he managed to dye and characterize numerous types of nerve cells of the bee brain, was, in the words of the world's foremost insect neuroanatomist, Nick Strausfeld, 'a supernova.' Not only did Kenyon draw the branching patterns of various neuron types in painstaking detail, but he also high­lighted, for the first time in any organism, that these fell into clearly identifi­able classes, which tended to be found only in certain areas of the brain.

One such type he found in the mushroom bodies is the Kenyon cells, named in his honor. Their cell bodies -- the part of the neuron that con­tains the chromosomes and the DNA -- decoding machinery -- are in a peripheral area enclosed by the calyx of each mushroom body (the mush­room's 'head'), with a few additional ones on the sides of or underneath the calyces. A finely arbored dendritic tree (the branched struc­ture that is a nerve cell's signal 'receiver') extends into the mushroom body calyx, and a single axon (the neuron's 'information-sending output cable') extends from each cell into the mushroom body pedunculus (the mushroom's 'stalk').

Extrapolating from just a few of these characteristically shaped neu­rons that he could see, Kenyon suggested (correctly) that there must be tens of thousands of such similarly shaped cells, with parallel outputs into each mushroom body pedunculus. (In fact, there are about 170,000 Kenyon cells in each mushroom body.) He found neurons that connect the an­tennal lobes (the primary relays processing olfactory sensory input) with the mushroom body input region (the calyces, where the Kenyon cells have the fine dendritic trees) -- and even suggested, again correctly, that the mushroom bodies were centers of multisensory integration.

Kenyon's 1896 brain wiring diagram [is a marvel]. It contains several classes of recognizable neuron types, with some suggestions for how they might be connected. Many neurons have extensions as widely branched as full­grown trees -- only, of course, much smaller. Consider that the drawing only shows around 20 of a honey bee brain's ~850,000 neurons. We now know that each neuron, through its many fine branches, can make up to 10,000 connection points (synapses) with other neurons. There may be a billion synapses in a honey bee's brain -- and, since the efficiency of synapses can be modified by experience, near-infinite possibility to alter the informa­tion flow through the brain by learning and memory. It is a mystery to me how, after the publication of such work as Kenyon's, anyone could have suggested that the insect brain is simple, or that the study of brain size could in any way be informative about the complexities of information pro­cessing inside a brain.

Kenyon apparently suffered some of the anxieties all too familiar to many early-career researchers today. Despite his scientific accomplish­ments, he had trouble finding permanent employment, and moved be­tween institutions several times, facing continuous financial hardship. Eventually, he appears to have snapped, and in 1899 Kenyon was arrested for 'erratic and threatening behavior' toward colleagues, who subsequently accused him of insanity. Later that year, he was permanently confined to a lunatic asylum, apparently without any opportunity ever to rehabilitate himself, and he died there more than four decades later -- as Nick Strausfeld writes, 'unloved, forgotten, and alone.'

It was not to be the last tragedy in the quest to understand the bee brain.”
― Lars Chittka, The Mind of a Bee