I'm surprised to not find Stanley G. Weinbaum in the list or the comments. He was early in sci-fi (mid 1930s) and died not too long after his career took off, but a bunch of his writing laid the foundation for many SF writers that came after.
As someone who has known about Perrone and his hives for a few years and has tried to follow his plans and directions, there is a key piece of information missing from most of his literature. The bees that Perrone has are Africanized and therefore way more aggressive and industrious. For those of us with standard European honey bees, the cavity sizes are just too large.