Where did The Blade get its name? Toledo, Ohio has a sister city in Toledo, Spain. So it made sense that the newspaper be named after a well-known product of that city - the steel-bladed sword. Also, at the time the newspaper was founded, the Ohio-Michigan War was being waged for control of Lucas County, Ohio. It was believed that The Blade would "always leap from its scabbard whenever the rights of individuals, or the community, shall be infringed'.I guess that made sense in 1835.
I don't have an answer for the Sacramento Bee. The Fresno/Modesto/Sacramento Bees are all descendants of "The Daily Bee," a gold-rush era paper founded in 1857, but there were older papers with that name on the East Coast. The web site doesn't explain the name, but they do let you know where you can rent their trucks.