Anyone want to take a crack at this?
https://www.history.org/Foundation/journal/Autumn07/bugs.cfmA year after the Mayflower arrived—perhaps with bees aboard—the Virginia Company of London sent beehives to its governor at Jamestown, "the preservation and encrease whereof we recommend to you." And "encrease" they did. By 1705, Virginia planter Robert Beverley could write: "Bees thrive there abundantly, and will very easily yield to the careful Huswife, two Crops of Honey in a Year." By 1782, as Thomas Jefferson wrote, "The bees have generally extended themselves into the country, a little in advance of the white settlers. The Indians therefore call them the white man's fly." When bees came, could settlers be far behind?
This is one of my favorite stories.The Indians named them " white man's flies" might be an indication there were none here before.
There is evidence of beekeeping in pottery in Africa and Western Asia from 9,000 years ago. We know that the Egyptians kept bees more than forty-five hundred years ago. Early Holocene rock art from 14,000 years ago depicts harvesting honey. Chances are just as soon as people began to build structures to live in, honeybees moved into those structures along side us. If we were already harvesting honey, then we no doubt let them build their hive and were soon providing structures for the bees. However aside from providing structures for the bees and harvesting the honey, probably very little was done.What information do we have as to when and where bees were first domesticated?
A railroad across Panama was built before the first US transcontinental railroad. The Panama version was only partially built in 1853, but that one is likely the railroad referenced in the quote above.NO. 945 FIRST SUCCESSFUL INTRODUCTION OF THE HONEYBEE TO CALIFORNIA - Here, on the 1,939-acre Rancho Potrero de Santa Clara, Christopher A. Shelton in early March 1853 introduced the honeybee to California. In Aspinwall, Panama, Shelton purchased 12 beehives from a New Yorker and transported them by rail, 'bongo,' pack mule, and steamship to San Francisco. Only enough bees survived to fill one hive, but these quickly propagated, laying the foundation for California's modern bee-keeping industry.
Location: San Jose Municipal Airport, 1661 Airport Blvd, San Jose
http://www.ohp.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=21522