Bees have been in folklore for thousands of years.

If a bee flies into your home, it means a stranger is coming. If a bee flies in and out of your home — on its own, not by being shooed outside — that’s a sign of good luck.

If a bee dies in your home, however, it’s bad luck. The arrival of a swarm without your knowledge? Disaster.

Unusually large stores of honey during the fall foretells of a hard winter ahead.

(There does not seem to be anything in legend about the news of the community printed on newsprint and delivered under a Bee banner, but we at The Newtown Bee would like to think that brings nothing but good luck to those who choose to welcome such an arrival into their home.)

These and other tidbits can be found in “Telling The Bees: A Swarm of Facts, Folklore, and Traditions,” one of the articles featured in the 2019 Old Farmer’s Almanac. The annual compendium is scheduled for full release on Monday, September 10 (although we've been seeing it sneak onto the shelves of some local stores already... ), complete with weather forecasts for 18 regions of the United States and the familiar hole drilled through the upper left corner.

The 227th edition of the book still compiled by Yankee Publishing in Dublin, N.H., continues a longstanding tradition of mixing meteorology and brief stories on myriad subjects.

The 2019 edition opens with its trends forecast — we may be exercising down the aisles of one of the town’s supermarkets within the next 12 months if the editors of this year’s Almanac are correct — before digging into the pros and cons of backyard livestock, the health advantages of owning a dog, the wild ride taken by John Stapp en route to developing seat belts, and sports analyst Charlie Pierce’s look back at the amazing 1969 New York Mets.

Staying true to their roots, the almanac’s staff also looks at the natural world. One special report explores how farmers are bringing their lifestyle into the 21st Century. Tips on successful gardening mingle among recipes for sausage, pickling ABCs, and the winners of this year’s recipe contest highlighting oranges, among other offerings in this year’s 256-page softcover release with the familiar cover illustration.

How Did They Do?

For winter 2017-18, The 2018 Old Farmer’s Almanac predicted a winter that would be “much colder than last year’s, but — just like last winter — not colder than average.”

Precipitation for last winter was to be “at above-normal levels throughout the country, which will translate to equally above-normal amounts of snowfall in parts of the Northeast,” among other locations, the experts predicted.

The 2018 Spring Weather Forecast for the United States said the Atlantic Corridor — which is where all but the northwest corner of Connecticut is placed within the Old Farmer’s Almanac mapping — would begin spring with a mix of showers and sun, “but winter may rear its head again to bring about more show in late March.”

April and May would be rainier than normal, with near normal temperatures, the Almanac also predicted for this region. The end of spring would bring warm weather and scattered thunderstorms.

The 2018 Summer Weather Forecast Summary said that while temperatures would be below normal in much of California, Alaska, Hawaii, the southern intermountain region (which includes areas of Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and Wyoming), and Texas-Oklahoma, “that’s where the cooler-than-normal temperatures end,” they wrote. “Across the rest of the US, we anticipate summer temperatures to be hotter than normal.”

For the Atlantic Corridor, the Regional Forecast Highlights said summer will be hotter than normal, “with the hottest periods in early June, early July, and early and mid-August. Rainfall will be below normal in the northern part of the region and above normal in the south.”

That sounds about right. Several locations in the northern hemisphere recorded their hottest temperatures ever in July 2018, according to almanac.com.

In North America, also according to the website, Burlington, Vt., and Mount Washington, N.H., had their warmest temperatures ever recorded on July 2, at 80 degrees and 60 degrees Fahrenheit, respectively. July 2018 was, also according to the Almanac’s website, “the 402nd consecutive month when average Earth temperatures were greater than the 30-year normal,” which dates back to February 1985, when Ronald Reagan was president.

Summer precipitation levels for the Northeast were expected to be below normal.

Print editions of The Old Farmer’s Almanac are $6.99, and available at most places where books and magazines are sold. A digital version as well as print editions are also available through almanac.com and through iTunes and amazon.com.