I'll start with my unauthorized take, without collecting the oral history of our founders: The image that first jumped into my head when I heard the phrase "personal bee" was of the old community bee -- say a quilting bee -- where a bunch of people get together to work on a project together. At The Personal Bee, I've got a sense that we're each part of a growing community working on a common project: assembling our own well-informed news editions every day ("news" in as many ways as it can be defined). That picture also calls to mind bees, the insects, themselves: a group buzzing along in a big social enterprise. They make honey and keep their queen happy. We create new ways of getting at and understanding the news.
Of course, the word "bee" has a much more direct connection with the idea of news and publishing. Here's a non-definitive historical survey: Since at least the early 18th century, publishers have produced periodicals named "the Bee." In sifting the Web search results, we happen first across Eustace Budgell, a British poet, essayist, politico, and spectacularly unsuccessful land speculator who was also something of a news pioneer. In 1733, he brought out a weekly pamphlet called The Bee. The first issue was subtitled, "Universal Weekly Pamphlet, Containing Something to Hit Every Mans Taste or Principles. It promised to "contain an abridgment of every thing Material, and all the Essays worth reading in the Weekly Papers" as well as Budgell's own writing. The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) notes The Bee published more than 100 issues but that Budgell was forced to fold the publication in 1735 because of his habits of "quarrelling with his booksellers, and filling his pamphlet with things entirely relating to himself."
More Bees followed. Irish novelist/poet/playwright Oliver Goldsmith started a literary magazine in London in 1759 called The Bee. A little further on, and across the Atlantic, you find L'Abeille de la Nouvelle-Orléans (the Bee of New Orleans), a French-language paper launched in September 1827 and soon joined by an English counterpart, the New Orleans Daily Bee. A few years later, François-Xavier Garneau, whom the Dictionary of Canadian Biography describes as a "notary, poet, and historian, started up L'Abeille canadienne. Garneau did not make a big splash in the world of journalism. The DCB summarizes L'Abeille's history thus: "The paper proposed to encourage 'the spread of knowledge and a liking for reading.' It was an unpretentious weekly, and ceased publication two months [after it began], on 8 Feb. 1834. ..."
But whether in French or English, why did "bee" suggest itself as a periodical name?
The best-known U.S. paper to use the title, The Sacramento Bee, came forth with an answer in its very first number. When the news sheet, then called The Daily Bee, hit the streets on February 3, 1857, founding editor John Rollin Ridge's note to readers explained:
“The name of The Bee has been adopted, as being different from that of every other paper of the state, and as also being emblematic of the industry which is to prevail in its every department.” (From Pictures of Our Nobler Selves: A history of Native American contributions to news media.)
That's a pretty clear statement, but eventually it was forgotten. In 1991, a Southern California paper poked fun at the name. The Bee responded with a column (republished, sans byline, on the paper's site) that recounted Ridge's 1857 pronouncement and went on to do a quick review of other papers that now carry the Bee name (including one in De Queen, Arkansas). The history notes the Bee legacy has its fun and historic side: Scoopy, the cartoon mascot of The Sacramento Bee and its sister papers in California's Central Valley, was drawn by Walt Disney (the caricature is a dead ringer for Disney's better-known rodent creations).
So what's the take-away, beyond the obvious fact I (and my colleague Ted) spent some time Google-mining this subject?
First, we really haven't gotten to the bottom of the "bee" mystery. Sure, Eustace Budgell published his Bee in 1733. But where did he get the name? And what about L'Abeille and the whole French connection? Second, and finally, the particulars of all that background aside, The Personal Bee has rich antecedents in the natural, social, and publishing worlds. We're glad to have you joining us in adding the next chapter to that story.