Stung by news of power blips and bees

As a journalist and comedian of the time of my youth, Will Rogers did say many times, "All I know is what I read in the newspapers." He died an untimely death in an aircrash on a return flight from Alaska in the plane piloted by the noted explorer Wiley Post. A tribute to the pair is a most powerful rotating searchlight, mounted on the southeast corner tower of the George Washington Bridge across the North Hudson River Bay connecting New Jersey to Manhattan Island, one of the five boroughs (counties) of the city of New York. That beacon of honor is a most powerful navigation aid for aircraft and, yes, even ships at sea, nearing the ports of New Jersey and New York.

My comments this morning concern:

(A) Your recent article referencing conceivably contrived power outages with vague "up the line" benefits.

This past Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday morning, my digital bedside electric clock has been automatically reset to an earlier morning time, like past midnight, due to obvious loss of power during sleep time. Your newspaper in effect, warned me of such events. My problem, other than automatically losing track of the time, is simply the fact that resetting these electronic gizmos takes three hands and a simultaneous understanding of sequencing the parts, all, in effect a delay in the start of a busy day. Fortunately. schools are not in session so the grand and great-grand kids don't miss the school bus, when running.

(B) Bees, Honey, Fruits and Nuts:

Now we have a totally different matter that requires understanding of logistics and habits of nature. The name of this game is not to fight nature, but figure out how to support and take advantage of it.

At an early age, in a community "next to the Largest City in the World," Yonkers (yonkuz), New York, also on the east side of the Hudson River, my older brother and our mom, whose life-time mission was "teaching her family," placed a mail order on Sears & Roebuck for a two or three pound package of "Italian Honey Bees" including an attached screened match-box sized container, a queen bee, plus a do it yourself put together beehive. About eight years later with a merit badge in Bee Keeping, I qualified as an Eagle Scout.

Here we are again, 75 or more years later, right here in North Idaho by choice, and meanwhile, also by choice, married into a whole family of beekeepers, honey producers and processors.

The recent local weekend activities included an uncommon occurrence of "spilling of bees" right here in Coeur d'Alene. Most unfortunate, but very possible if one understands the circumstances of the beekeeping industry.

Products of fruits and vegetables require fertilization of a plant. The process is accomplished by the many ways of nature including insects, wind and weather and in some special cases, by artificial means. Midwest family beekeepers for many years have serviced the orchard pollinations of the more arid regions of the West. Each fruit or vegetable product has a different or unique schedule of pollenizing and/or gestation. Same or similar products raised in dissimilar climates require suitable attention.

Tractors and trailers, similar to the unit pictured in your recent news, carry to various destinations in the USA and Canada, hives of bees to facilitate the fertilization of the producing plants. Each plant species has a unique growth period, requiring that the traveling beehives be as mobile as possible. A beekeeper/driver is usually a requisite of the process. Duration of each assignment is roughly scheduled to consider all the vagaries of nature of each specie of plant.

All that intellect on the part of the product producer, or farmer by nature, did not come "out of a book." In my wife, Pearl's, own family, her brothers left bees and hives as far away as Texas and California. The location of family generations has been centered in Kansas and the Dakotas.

That leaves us now with the processing of the raw honey for market. That part is farmed out at the option of the producer. Let me suggest visiting a local supermarket, finding the honey department where you may find several brands of processed honey, from different locations.

North Idaho is such a great place to be, and live.

John S. McConnell is a resident of Post Falls.