Quench is important and dangerous to superconducting RF cavities. This paper illustrates the mechanism of quench and how a quench detector works, and analyzes the quench events happening during beam operations and cavity conditioning. We find that the quench protection is mostly triggered by some reasons such as fluctuation of cavity voltage, multipacting or arc, rather than a real cavity thermal breakdown. The results will be beneficial to optimize the operation parameters of superconducting cavities, to discover the real reasons for beam trip by quench interlock, and to improve the operation stability of superconducting RF systems.