Shortly after purchasing the Triple-A baseball team in Salt Lake City in 2005, Larry H. Miller knew that one of the first things on his agenda would be changing the name from the Stingers back to the Bees name of his youth.
“We are excited to bring Salt Lake baseball back to its roots,” Miller said in a 2005 press release announcing the name change. “The Bees are a significant part of baseball history in Utah, and it’s our hope that the change will bring with it the nostalgia baseball is known for.”
The roots of Bees baseball date back to 1915, when the Pacific Coast League’s San Francisco team relocated from the bay to the mountains. A name-the-team contest was held to change the name, and “Bees” was chosen as a nod to the Beehive State. The original Bees lasted until 1926, when they packed up and moved to Hollywood. They stayed in Southern California until the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, in 1958, and the team returned to Salt Lake City, where they remained the Bees until 1969.
Baseball remained a constant in Salt Lake over the next 35 years, but the name of the team was anything but. The team played as the Angels for a few years before changing to orange and teal, becoming the Gulls. The Gulls moved to Calgary in 1984 and were replaced by the Trappers, a rookie league squad that moved in and played ball on Derks Field until 1992. Triple-A baseball would return in 1994, when Joe Buzas shuffled his club to Salt Lake and brought back the insect theme, naming the team the Buzz. The new name was short lived, however, when a lawsuit forced a change and the franchise came out the other side as the Stingers. Following the passing of Buzas, in 2003, Miller bought the team and began the motion to return the team to its original state as the Bees.
However, changing the name wasn’t as simple as just deciding on a name and ordering new uniforms. Miller and the general manager, Marc Amicone, had to negotiate use of the nickname with another minor league team in Burlington, Iowa, which was already called the Bees. Burlington agreed to share the name in exchange for an ad in the game program.
The switch to Bees resurrected a cartoon Bee logo that was updated from a version used in the ’60s, and that was combined with a ligature logo of an interlocking “SL” that had been used in different variations since the early 1900s. The change also brought back the classic black and yellow colors after years of Angels red, which was worn by the Stingers.
In 2015, the logos received an update and refresh by designer Ben Barnes that maintained the integrity of the original marks. In another case of the logo coming full circle, Barnes would later find out that his aunt’s father had drawn the original ’60s logo that the new Bumble was based on.
The change from Stingers to Bees proved to be an immediate hit. In 2006 the Bees ranked in Minor League Baseball’s Top Twenty-Five for merchandise sales, and in 2019 the team made the Top Twenty-Five list for the thirteenth consecutive year.
