> A remarkable amount of folklore has from the earliest times attached itself to bees and some of it has lingered on to a surprisingly recent date. It may well be that there is a measure of truth in the belief that bees prosper best on the fringe of civilization. In any case, once introduced into America, bees prospered amazingly in their new environment. Swarms were always escaping to the woods; hollow tree furnished an almost ideal home. As matter of record, the honeybee crossed the Allegheny Mountains far in advance of the first settler. It is an old-time whimsy that absconding swarms always fly westerly, an idea doubtless without any real foundation.—Van  Wagenen, Jared. (1953) The Golden Age  of Homespun,  Cornell University Press

Comment: we see a lot of these ideas without any real foundation, bandied about even today.

PLB

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