Old bees yield no honey. [ Proverb ]
The pedigree of honey
Does not concern the bee;
A clover, any time, to him
Is aristocracy. [ Emily Dickinson ]
His labor is a chant.
His idleness a tune;
Oh, for a bee's experience
Of clovers and of noon! [ Emily Dickinson ]
How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour.
And gather honey all the day,
From every opening flower. [ Watts ]
Where bees are there is honey. [ Proverb ]
Good bees never turn to drones. [ Proverb ]
No bees, no honey; No work, no money. [ Proverb ]
The wild bee reels from bough to bough
With his furry coat and his gauzy wing.
Now in a lily cup, and now
Setting a jacinth bell a-swing.
In his wandering. [ Oscar Wilde ]
Swine, bees and women, cannot be turned. [ Proverb ]
As great a store
Have we of books as bees of herbs or more. [ Henry Vaughan ]
May bees flee not at this time of the year. [ Proverb ]
But for your words, they rob the Hybla bees,
And leave them honeyless. [ William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act V. Sc.1 ]
But the rose leaves herself upon the brier
For winds to kiss and grateful bees to feed. [ Keats ]
For where's the state beneath the Firmament,
That doth excell the Bees for Government? [ Du Bartas ]
The little bee returns with evening's gloom,
To join her comrades in the braided hive,
Where, housed beside their mighty honeycomb,
They dream their polity shall long survive. [ Charles (Tennyson) Turner ]
The honey-bee that wanders all day long
The field, the woodland, and the garden over.
To gather in his fragrant winter store.
Humming in calm content his winter song,
Seeks not alone the rose's glowing breast,
The lily's dainty cup, the violet's lips.
But from all rank and noxious weeds he sips
The single drop of sweetness closely pressed
Within the poison chalice. [ Anne C. Lynch Botta ]
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 ]
Listen! O, listen!
Here ever hum the golden bees
Underneath full-blossomed trees.
At once with glowing fruit and flowers crowned. [ Lowell ]
The careful insect 'midst his works I view,
Now from the flowers exhaust the fragrant dew.
With golden treasures load his little thighs,
And steer his distant journey through the skies. [ Gay ]
Even bees, the little alms-men of spring bowers,
Know there is richest juice in poison-flowers. [ Keats ]
Bees work for man, and yet they never bruise
Their Master's flower, but leave it having done,
As fair as ever and as fit to use;
So both the flower doth stay and honey run. [ Herbert ]
So work the honey-bees;
Creatures, that by a rule in nature teach
The art of order to a peopled kingdom.
They have a king and officers of sorts;
Where some, like magistrates, correct at home;
Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad;
Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,
Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds;
Which pillage they, with merry march, bring home.
To the tent royal of their emperor;
Who, busied in his majesty, surveys
The singing masons building roofs of gold;
The civil citizens kneading up the honey;
The poor mechanic porters crowding in
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate;
The sad-ey'd justice, with his surly hum.
Delivering over to executors pale
The lazy yawning drone. [ William Shakespeare ]
Look on the bee upon the wing among flowers;
How brave, how bright his life! then mark him hiv'd,
Cramp'd, cringing in his self-built, social cell,
Thus it is in the world-hive; most where men
Lie deep in cities as in drifts. [ Bailey ]
Where there is honey to be found, there will be bees. [ Plaut ]
Gaudy slothful people are wasps, that eat up the bees' honey. [ Proverb ]
Bees that have honey in their mouths, have stings in their tails. [ Proverb ]
Rumor is like bees: the more you fight them the more you don't get rid of them. [ H. W. Shaw ]
He is not worthy of the honeycomb That shuns the hive because the bees have stings. [ William Shakespeare ]
So work the honey-bees, creatures that by a rule in nature teach the act of order to a peopled kingdom. [ William Shakespeare ]
Many-colored, sunshine-loving, spring-betokening bee! yellow bee, so mad for love of early-blooming flowers! [ Professor Wilson ]
Bees will not work except in darkness; thought will not work except in silence; neither will virtue work except in secrecy. [ Carlyle ]
Cupid's bow is, the Asiatics tell us, strung with bees, which are apt to sting sometimes fatally, those who meddle with it. [ Miss Edgeworth ]
A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of the bees, will often be stung for his curiosity. [ Pope ]
Some read books only with a view to find fault, while others read only, to be taught; the former are like venomous spiders, extracting a poisonous quality, where the latter, like the bees, sip out a sweet and profitable juice. [ L'Estrange ]
The bee is enclosed, and shines preserved, in a tear of the sisters of Phaeton, so that it seems enshrined in its own nectar. It has obtained a worthy reward for its great toils; we may suppose that the bee itself would have desired such a death. [ Martial ]
If flowers have souls,
said Undine, the bees, whose nurses they are, must seem to them darling children at the breast. I once fancied a paradise for the spirits of departed flowers.
They go,
answered I, not into paradise, but into a middle state; the souls of lilies enter into maidens' foreheads, those of hyacinths and forget-me-nots dwell in their eyes, and those of roses in their lips.
[ Richter ]