Quotes from Sue Hubbell

Late August still feels like summer here in the Ozarks, but it is the time of year the nighthawks are moving on to their South American wintering grounds.

Great Wass Island Preserve is a 1,579-acre Nature Conservancy jewel, a place of spectacular botanical interest, and Jonesport is situated on a postcard-pretty harbor. Tourism is not serious business in those parts - boat building and fishing are - and there are no signs telling how to get to Great Wass. But I know.

Beekeeping is farming for intellectuals.

I know a number of coastal trails in downeast Maine, all of them interesting.

I spend a lot of time sizing up a tree before I fell it. Once it's down, I clear away the brush around the tree before I start cutting it into lengths so I won't trip and lose my balance with the chain saw running.

I like pulling on a baggy bee suit, forgetting myself and getting as close to the bees' lives as they will let me, remembering in the process that there is more to life than the merely human.

The only time I ever believed that I knew all there was to know about beekeeping was the first year I was keeping them. Every year since I've known less and less and have accepted the humbling truth that bees know more about making honey than I do.

lepidopterists give the noun a gerund's push toward the verb, and say that butterflies are nectaring...

Got me as fussed as a fart in a mitten.

when I offered to either stay and help or go bake a pie, it was the pie that was most needed. It took six pies to finish the roof. I had not known that pies were such an important part of construction.

long ago gave up a number of beekeeping practices conceived with the notion of making bees do certain things that seemed good from a human standpoint but which usually involved radically disrupting the hive. Instead, I watch the bees more, try to understand what they are doing and then see if I can work in a way that will be in keeping with their biology and behavior. I try to create conditions that will make them happy, and then leave them alone as much as possible.

Like many beekeepers, I have discovered a dose of bee venom from a sting alleviates the symptoms of arthritis,

Bees are forgiving animals, and will tolerate a good deal of rearrangement in their lives for whatever new fad sweeps the beekeeping industry—plastic foundation and frames, double queen management, tar-paper wraps for winter—but the best beekeepers I know are those who let the bees themselves, not equipment manufacturers, be their teachers.

Buying a hive of bees is, in some ways, like buying an Irish Setter puppy: it changes one's life. But having two, or even three, hives of bees is not like having two or three Irish Setter puppies. The first hive is a Big Deal. The additional ones are not.

Karl von Frisch, Nobelist, zoologist and student of bee behavior, discovered that it helped bees to find their own hives if those placed in a row were painted different colors; in addition, he found that they rather fancied blue. When I was traveling in Mexico I was delighted to see beehives painted in deep vibrant colors—red, green, blue and black.

solid because the bees inside

discovered a classification Jorge Luis Borges devised, claiming that A certain Chinese encyclopedia divides animals into: a. Belonging to the Emperor b. Embalmed c. Tame d. Sucking pigs e. Sirens f. Fabulous g. Stray dogs h. Included in the present classification i. Frenzied j. Innumerable k. Drawn with a very fine camel-hair brush l. Et cetera m. Having just broken the water pitcher n. That from a long way off look like flies.

I've come to the belief that we manufacture whatever immortal souls we have out of the bits of difference we make by living in this world.

Lo que reside aquí me es ajeno Brotan lágrimas porque no lo merezco Y me siento afortunado.

LO QUE RESIDE AQUÍ ME ES AJENO BROTAN LÁGRIMAS PORQUE NO LO MEREZCO Y ME SIENTO AFORTUNADO" Koan de un poeta japonés anónimo.

Vivir en un mundo donde las respuestas a las preguntas pueden ser tantas y tan buenas es lo que me hace salir de la cama y calzarme las botas cada mañana.

Y nosotros aquí, en nuestro mundo, aburridísimo en comparación, pensando que lo sabemos y que lo vemos todo." Robert Crawford

Vivimo en un mundo que no sólo es más extraño de lo que pensamos, sino más extraño de lo que podemos pensar." Sir James Hopwood Jeans

Una casa es demasiado pequeña, demasiado restrictiva. Quiero el mundo entero, y también las estrellas.