Honey

“ Or roses smother'd in the stove;
So smells the air of spiced wine,
Or essences of jessamine;
So smells the breath about the hives
When well the work of honey thrives,
And all the busy factors come
Laden with wax and honey home ”

“ They do not make honey for us, like the bees, but many of them are as beautiful as the flowers they light upon, and they always delight the hearts of little children. They live a gay life, flitting from flower to flower, sipping the drops of honey-dew, without a thought for the morrow. ”

“ The honey-guide is an extraordinary bird; how is it that every member of its family has learned that all men, white or black, are fond of honey? The instant the little fellow gets a glimpse of a man, he hastens to greet him with the hearty invitation to come, as Mbia translated it, to a bees' hive, and take some honey. ”

“ The fir hastily replied: "There is no honey in my boughs, no virgin honey beneath my bark. Thrice in summer, during this wretched summer season a raven croaked upon my crown, a snake lay at my root, winds blew past me, the sun shone through me."
He goes his way, keeps stepping forwards, finds an oak on a trampled plain, makes inquiry of his oak: "Is there any honey in thy boughs, any virgin honey beneath thy bark to serve as salve for hurts, as embrocation for sores:" The oak made answer intelligently: "There is honey in my boughs, virgin honey beneath my bark. ”

“ These little lovers of sunshine contrive, through a constant and simultaneous beating of their wings, to maintain in their hive a degree of warmth that shall equal that of a day in spring. And they owe this to the honey, which is itself no more than a ray of heat which has passed through their bodies, and now gives its generous blood to the hive. ”

“ That goes forth through the summer day and sings.
And gathers honey from all growing things
In garden plot or on the clover lea.
When the long afternoon grows late, and she
Would seek her hive, she cannot lift her wings. ”

“ And this pollen, for the bee-bread And as food for young, they use, Mixed with honey and with water,-- Swallowed and disgorged like juice By the nurses, who digest it Partly, for the larvae-food, Taking care that each shall have it, Just according to the brood.
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Now we'll watch and see them working; See them brush off pollen-dust; See them, too, disgorge the honey, Into cells the sweetness thrust. Children, with your useful fingers, Hands and arms and feet and head, Do not let the bees surpass you, Making honey, nay, nor bread. ”

“ Ye are the golden pots in which manna is stored, and rocks flowing with honey, nay, combs of honey, most plenteous udders of the milk of life, garners ever full; ye are the tree of life and the fourfold river of Paradise, by which the human mind is nourished, and the thirsty intellect is watered and refreshed. ”

“ Man has already taken his share of the harvest. Every good hive has presented him with eighty or a hundred pounds of honey; the most remarkable will sometimes even give two hundred, which represent an enormous expanse of liquefied light, immense fields of flowers that have been visited daily one or two thousand times. ”

“ Just as a bee gathers honey from various flowers, so must I gather knowledge from all other sciences, press out their honey for the sweetening and ennobling of the life of man. I must distribute light and shade with skill, in order to create a beautiful and harmonious ideal of human existence. ”

“ The bees that are nearest the cells pass it on to their neighbors, and these in their turn to those next them. Thus it goes from mouth to mouth through the crowd, till it reaches those furthest away. And this honey, this essence of sunshine and flowers, circulates through the hive until such time as the sun itself, the glorious sun of the spring, shall thrust in its beam through the half-open door, and tell of the violets and anemones that are once more coming to life. ”

“ They stare amazedly round them, convinced that they must be victims of some mistake; and the mother-idea of their life being first to assert itself in their dull brain, they take a step towards the vats of honey to seek comfort there. But ended for them are the days of May honey, the wine-flower of lime trees and fragrant ambrosia of thyme and sage, of marjoram and white clover. Where the path once lay open to the kindly, abundant reservoirs, that so invitingly offered their waxen and sugary mouths, there stands now a burning-bush all alive with poisonous, bristling stings. ”

“ So long as there is blossom on the trees, and honey in the blossom, the bees will frequent them in crowds, and fill the place with their music; but when the blossom is over, and the honey gone, they too will disappear. ”

“ Let there be wings and yellow dust and the drone of dreams of honey—who loses and remembers?—who keeps and forgets?
In a blue sheen of moon over the bones and under the hanging honeycomb the bees come home and the bees sleep. ”

“ We know that honey is really “juices of the flowers,” which have undergone a wonderful change in the bees’ stomachs; and that, although it is very pleasant to the taste, it is not able to restore the dead to life, or to work any other miracles of a like nature!
There are many different qualities of honey, each depending on the flowers from which the nectar is gathered. There is, for instance, the beautiful almond-flavoured honey from the apple blossom or the dark and strong [94] heather honey. But the honey which is perhaps the most common and beautiful is that from clover. ”

“ If the greatest instinct in workers be to gather honey, why do they not abandon the brood en masse, go into the honey boxes, and begin comb-breeding, when the grand flow of honey is to be found in the flowers? ”

“ Before that day, however, hucksters bearing trays of honey on their heads are eagerly welcomed, and the peasant's special dainty--fresh cucumbers thickly coated with honey--is indulged in unblessed. Honey is not so plentiful that one can afford to fling away a premature chance! ”

“ We may well conclude that it is owing to the keenness of this sense that they perceive the presence of flowers containing nectar; and, guided by it, they wing their flight to distant fields where the white clover attracts them, or to more barren districts where the heath promises them abundant pasturage. It is very certain that the fragrant aroma of honey is at once perceived by them at many feet from their dwellings ”

“ Leonard replied, dryly. "Well, Amy, if you are as fond of honey as I am, you will think a swarm of bees a very nice present. Fancy buckwheat cakes eaten with honey made from buckwheat blossoms! There's a conjunction that gives to winter an unflagging charm. If the old Hebrews felt as I do, a land flowing with milk and honey must have been very alluring. Such a land the valley of the Hudson certainly is. It's one of the finest grass regions of the world, and grass means milk; and the extensive raspberry fields along its banks mean honey. ”

“ The honey-bag is as transparent as crystal, containing the honey that the bee has brushed from the flowers; of which the greater part is carried to the hive, and poured into the cells of the honey-comb, while the remainder serves for the bee’s own nourishment; for, during the summer, it never touches what has been laid up for winter. ”

“ Then an angel visited her, and gave her honey gathered from the roses of Paradise; and the honey was so sweet, that when she had tasted it she could not doubt whence it had come, and she felt herself enlightened by the true God ”

“ And some of the less active bees, who have not used their wings, but have heard about honey, taste the compound, and finding it wonderfully sustaining and exactly suited to their aspirations, they religiously store it, dark and sticky, in waxen cells, as if it were what they genuinely believe it to be—the purest honey. ”

“ Seizing the honest fellow they give him to understand that they want his honey. If they killed him they would never be able to extract his spoils from their deep recesses; they therefore bite and tease him, after their most approved fashion, all the time singing in his ears, 'Your honey or your life,' until he empties his capacious receptacle, when they release him and lick up his sweets. ”

“ But what most spoils a sample of honey, making it dark and unpalatable, is leaf honey or honey-dew. This substance is not really honey, being secreted by the leaves of certain trees, especially the lime-tree, oak, and sycamore, and in some years much more than in others. The bees feed on it with relish, but it is not wholesome for them. ”

“ Our honey also is taken and reputed to be the best, because it is harder, better wrought, and cleanlier vesselled up, than that which cometh from beyond the sea, where they stamp and strain their combs, bees, and young blowings altogether into the stuff, as I have been informed. ”

“ The crop of honey is most abundant if gathered at full moon, and it is richest when the weather is fine. In all honey, that which flows of itself, like must or oil, has received from us the name of acetum.39 The summer honey is the most esteemed of all, from the fact of its being made when the weather is driest: it is looked upon as the most serviceable when made from thyme;40 it is then of a golden colour, and of a most delicious flavour. The honey that we see formed in the calix of flowers is of a rich and unctuous nature ”

“ Isn’t that what you said before, mamma?”
“Yes, darling, but do you see any honey here?” 29
“No, mamma, and I never knew before that buttercups had honey. I always thought honey came from a beehive.”
“It does come to us from a beehive, but it comes from flowers first, and one of the many kinds that furnish it is this buttercup. The bee sips it from the flowers, just a tiny bit from each blossom that he visits, and when he has enough he takes it home to the hive and puts it away to eat by-and-by, in the winter, when there are no flowers growing for him to rifle. ”

“ Parents in those days used to send their children to get honey from the rocks and trees. Ciaran stayed at home, and when reproved dipped his jar into the nearest spring and, drew it out full of honey. ”

“ The flowers always have a little pouch somewhere about them in which they keep a stock of honey on hand. Their beautiful colors and delicious smell attract, by day and night, bees, butterflies, and moths. ”

“ Here the honey makers live in perpetual confinement, and receive a constant supply of flowers, pollen, etc., which is continually being brought them by I, and which, by a process of digestion and secretion, they convert into honey. ”

“ You imagined perhaps that bees made honey expressly for man. Undeceive yourself: bees make honey for themselves and not for us. We plunder their riches.”
“What becomes of the little balls of pollen?” inquired Jules.
“The pollen enters into the making of honey, and serves as nourishment for the bees. The working bee, on its return from harvesting, puts its hind legs into a cell where there is neither larva nor honey, and with the end of its middle legs it detaches the pellets and pushes them to the bottom. ”

“ But among them all, the first rank, and our special admiration, ought, in justice, to be accorded to bees, which alone, of all the insects, appear to have been created for the benefit of man. They extract honey and collect it, a juicy substance remarkable for its extreme sweetness, lightness, and wholesomeness. ”

“ And now you will see why cup-shaped flowers so often droop their heads - think of the harebell, the snowdrop, the lily-of-the- valley, the campanula, and a host of others; how pretty they look with their bells hanging so modestly from the slender stalk! They are bending down to protect the honey-glands within them, for if the cup became full of rain or dew the honey would be useless, and the insects would cease to visit them. ”

“ “The bees are very attentive to the flowers till their honey is done, and then they fly over them. I don’t know if the flowers feel grateful to the bees; ”

“ To be sure, people had honey; but honey is rare, dear, and scanty; it can never have filled one quarter the place that sugar fills in our modern affections. Try for a moment to realise drinking honey with one's whisky-and-water, or doing the year's preserving with a pot of best Narbonne, and you get at once a common measure of the difference between the two as practical sweeteners. ”

“ Bees do not require to be taken care of, or driven into the field; they fly out and find the way home again for themselves, and collect honey without giving the very least trouble.” “Thou hast spoken like a sensible woman,” replied Harry. “We will carry out thy proposal without delay, and besides all that, honey tastes better and nourishes one better than goat’s milk, and it can be kept longer too.” ”

“ It has been said, that where the air is clear and hot, honey is better than where it is variable and cold, and this seems to have served as an apology for the inferiority of much of the honey contained in this country. ”

“ By the use of their wings they have access to each other on different branches or on different vegetables, and by living upon honey probably acquire a higher degree of animation, and thus seem to resemble the anthers of flowers, which probably are supported by honey only, and thence acquire greater sensibility ”

“ To gather honey, and bring back every day to the common exchequer the fruits of the plunder, separate the honey from the wax, and with the latter construct their cell, distil the honey, and die, constitute the duties of the bee. ”

“ In 1889 the American Pomological Society added Honey to its list of fruits. Tree vigorous, hardy and productive in the South; glands usually reniform but sometimes globose; fruit small to medium, oblong-oval, tapering at the apex into a long, sharp nipple or beak, and marked with a distinct suture; color whitish-yellow, washed and dotted with red, which deepens to almost a crimson blush; flesh creamy-white, streaked with red around the pit, juicy, very tender, melting, sweet, with a distinct, rich, honey-like flavor; quality very good; pit free ”