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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, JULY 8, 2015
%eeV Unpredictability, ¿nicky nature draw beekeepers in
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Right now, they say, the
tiny black and yellow insects
are struggling. Colony collapse
disorder, a mysterious phenom-
enon where worker bees aban-
don their hive and their queen,
has decimated bee populations
across the country in recent
years. According to some esti-
mates, the total U.S. honey bee
population is less than half of
what it was at the beginning of
the 1950s. In the early 2000s,
commercial beekeepers found
more and more of their hives
completely abandoned.
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But, in Paci¿c County, the
outlook for bees this year is
bright.
Another service the club
provides, both to club members
and the general public, is swarm
removal. When a honey bee
hive¶s population swells and it
becomes too crowded inside, the
colony will split and a number
of bees, along with a queen, will
search for a home elsewhere.
This is called swarming and it
can look a little horrifying: The
bees mass together, forming of-
ten huge, swaying clumps that
hang from tree branches.
Then club member Dutch
Holland might get a call and out
he comes with a box and un-
ceremoniously dumps the bees
inside. If the queen goes in ¿rst,
sometimes the workers will fall
in line and follow her scent into
their new home.
This year alone, Holland has
collected 18 swarms. Another
member collected 23, most orig-
inating from his own assortment
of hives. All together so far, the
club has gathered approximate-
ly 70 swarms and will likely
end the year with close to 100,
Holland predicts. Of these, he
says, about 80 percent will be-
come successful hives with
larvae-bearing queens and a
healthy worker bee population.
“That¶s impressive for one
little club,” he said in a phone in-
NATALIE ST. JOHN — EO Media Group
Beekeepers have many tools of the trade, one of the more
important is the smoker, which helps keep bees relatively
calm while beekeepers work on a hive — though some
beekeepers don’t use them at all.
terview June 25. “This is going to
be a good year. We had an early
spring and it¶s probably going to
be a late summer so bees are going
to be active all the way through.”
He says it feels like the bees
are coming back.
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Meanwhile, back at the
farm, the inspection of hive
No. 3 has become a more
complicated operation.
Paul Young lifts one box.
Instead of a neat patchwork of
honey and pollen in the cells
there is a drooping mass of
comb built by the bees them-
selves along the bottom of the
frame. Bees are everywhere, the
“bzzzzzzz” rising loud and mad
once again.
Young calls for another box
and a bucket. He and other club
members carefully scrape away
the excess. The excitement dies
down. Young moves through
the boxes. He has not found a
queen, though there are several
“queen cups,” indicating that the
bees are trying to pave the way
for a new queen. A hive without
a queen is a hive that won¶t last
long. The queen is the only bee
that lays eggs; she is the engine
at the heart of any hive.
Looking at the hive from the
outside, it would be impossible
to tell that its inhabitants are
facing such a perilous future.
From the outside, it looks busy
² literally buzzing with bees,
collecting and storing honey.
Steve Young and Fischer have
options, though. The most ob-
vious option is to bring in a new
queen themselves, a purchase
they could make online or through
some local beekeepers and bee
breeders. The important thing is
they found out before the hive re-
ally started to suffer, they say.
This unpredictability and the
bees¶ own sometimes ¿nicky na-
ture are what attract people to bee-
keeping. Inside any hive, there¶s a
whole other world unfolding.
Old queens die and newly
hatched queens stalk the combs,
killing rivals.
Drones ² the male bees that
mate with the queen ² hang
around for as long as they¶re use-
ful, then they¶re shown the door.
Workers and nurse bees at-
tend to honey collection and the
rearing of young.
Together, the bees rise to face
attack and Àee together when
the hive is lost. And beekeepers
are the delighted spectators and
concerned stewards of all of this.
Or, as Friedlander says,
“Managing bees is like herding
cats. They¶re going to do what
they¶re going to do, but you can
kind of guide them in the right
direction.”
For swarm rescue, call Dutch
Holland at 360-942-7830. For
more information about the bee-
keeping club, visit its Facebook
page: Willapa River Beekeeping
Club.
RLverZalN Thousands owed )loZerV Second year of project
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The city of Astoria¶s Fi-
nance Director Susan Brooks
said as of early June, Smi-
thart owed the city $92,000
in lodging taxes and past-due
water bills. And Knight said
Smithart owed $16,000 to the
county, as of the beginning of
June.
Smithart¶s lease on the
Riverwalk Inn runs through
September 2017, with an op-
tion to extend another ¿ve
years. As part of the lease
assignment, the Port would
enter negotiations on a new
lease with Sonpatki, who said
he wants at least 17 years.
Knight said he has reached
the end of his patience with
Smithart, who he said has
been dif¿cult to get in touch
with. Smithart has also not
responded to several requests
for an interview over the past
week. Knight has said his best
guess was that Smithart might
be negotiating for a better
deal, adding that he could add
an investor with up to 49 per-
cent ownership without Port
Commission approval.
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Former Astoria commer-
cial developer Chester Tra-
bucco, who invested millions
into the Hotel Elliott before
selling the property in 2010,
came forward as an interest-
ed party in the Riverwalk Inn.
Trabucco said he represented
a partnership interested in the
hotel, although he never re-
vealed any partners.
Perplexed by a Friday
story in The Daily Astorian
reporting the lease on the Riv-
erwalk Inn still might still be
available, Sonpatki called the
newspaper Monday. He said
Smithart had signed a con-
tract long ago stipulating he
turn the hotel¶s operation over
to Param by September, with
bonuses for leaving early.
Before Sonpatki¶s call
Tuesday, Knight said Trabucco
had called to say his partner-
ship was no longer interested.
“It appears it has already
been sold,” Trabucco told the
newspaper Tuesday.
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Smithart and partner Seth
Davis¶ Hospitality Masters,
which had not operated any ho-
tels before, won the blessing of
the Port Commission in March
2012 to reopen the shuttered
Red Lion Inn overlooking the
West End Mooring Basin.
They beat out Portland real
estate and development com-
pany Williams/Dame & As-
sociates, which has designed
hotels, apartments, subdi-
visions and of¿ce buildings
around Portland, Bend and
Los Angeles. The company
wanted to tear the former Red
Lion down and build a new
84-room hotel surrounded by
a boardwalk.
The Port¶s original lease
with Hospitality Masters was
for $10,000 a month, plus 10
percent of the hotel¶s gross
revenue. By August 2013 the
Port had already given Smi-
thart his ¿rst eviction notice,
after he fell behind as much
as $40,000 in rent and reve-
nue-sharing with the Port and
$48,000 in the city¶s lodging
taxes. Smithart ¿gured out a
payment plan and survived.
The Port Commission vot-
ed 3-2 in November 2013 to
give Smithart a $5,000 month-
ly reduction in rent November
through April, provided he re-
invested it in the hotel.
Knight said it feels as if Smi-
thart is using the Port¶s ² and by
extension the public¶s ² asset in
the hotel to build an arcade.
While falling behind on
bills at the hotel, Smithart
opened the Arc Arcade a year
ago at the corner of 11th and
Commercial streets.
He started with mostly
retro arcade consoles he said
came from his own collec-
tion and friends, along with a
cafe and video game rentals.
He has since added computer
rentals, Àat-screen monitors, a
gigantic Àat-screen television
with gaming console rentals
and a large selection of comic
books.
Last month, Smithart
opened an expansion of the
Arc Arcade, with an entire ad-
ditional room of retro arcade
games, billiards and Skee-
Ball. He has also talked about
starting laser tag, game design
classes and a public-access
television station.
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More than a year later, the
conservancy went back to
collect thousands of bur-
geoning shoots.
“There are a few genera-
tions involved in these vio-
lets,” Voelke said of the tiny
plants now soaking up sun-
shine and rain at Circle Creek.
It was important, she said,
to maintain the Àowers¶ coast
genetics for the sake of the
project.
In the fall, the conservancy
will reach out to volunteers to
plant the Àowers at its property
on the Long Beach Peninsula
and the Clatsop Plains. Fall
and early winter are the best
times for planting because the
Àowers are getting dormant,
“and they stay nice and wet,
so they¶re well-established by
spring,” Voelke said.
Increasing the presence of
early blue violets will cause a
re-emergence of the Oregon
silverspot butterÀy at suitable
habitats. The Oregon silver-
spot butterÀy, which is federal-
ly listed under the Endangered
Species Act as threatened,
relies entirely on the Àower
because it where the adult but-
terÀies will lay eggs and where
the larva can successfully feed
and develop.
The Clatsop Plains and
Long Beach Peninsula used to
teem with butterÀies but they
haven¶t been seen much since
the 1990s, NCLC Communi-
cations Coordinator Bonnie
Henderson. Some violets re-
main, but not enough to sup-
port a robust butterÀy popula-
tion, Reich said.
Recovery plan
The conservancy¶s ap-
proach to restoring the butter-
Àies is really habitat-focused,
Henderson said.
Reich agreed, adding,
“Part of the recovery plan for
the species is to bring back
the population, and before we
can do that, we need to have a
habitat.”
Rather than releasing a
batch of non-native butterÀies
onto the plains and peninsula
and hoping they will remain,
the conservancy is trying to
build a suitable habitat that
will support native butterÀies
repopulating themselves.
The conservancy is man-
aging the coastal prairie hab-
itat, on which the Oregon
silverspot butterÀy is depen-
dent, using strategies such as
mowing, burning, removing
invasive species and planting
native plants, like the early
blue violets. The presumption,
Henderson said, is that butter-
Àies will ¿nd the Àowers and
introduce a new generation of
the species. She described the
management strategy as “a to-
tally natural process, aided by
a lot of human activity.”
The early blue violets are
just a small part of a larger
story, Reich said. The con-
servancy is working with the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,
the National Park Service and
Willapa National Wildlife Ref-
uge on a ¿ve-year North Coast
prairie restoration project. The
group is in the second year of
the project, having spent the
¿rst portion preparing plots
at research areas for testing
site-management strategies.
3anKanGlerV Must have permit
&onWLnXeG IroP 3aJe 1A
The definition of an itin-
erant merchant in the code
applies to “a person occupy-
ing a temporary fixed loca-
tion, who promotes, solicits
or sells from stock or in-
ventory on hand or displays
samples and solicits orders
for merchandise in stock.”
The amendment seeks to
expand the definition to in-
clude any person offering
a service, entertainment or
nothing, in return for com-
pensation.
Currently the ordinance
entirely bans begging or so-
liciting on the streets or in
any public place, the amend-
ment to the itinerant merchant
regulation would allow that
activity ² as long as the indi-
vidual has obtained a permit.
The fees remain unchanged:
$50 per day or a maximum of
$1,000 in a calendar year.
Many municipalities¶ laws
restricting or disallowing
panhandling or begging have
come under scrutiny as being
unconstitutional in the past
few years.
“It¶s one of the things that
has changed,” Winstanley
said, adding it has put police
of¿cers in a dif¿cult position
when it comes to enforce-
ment. With the amendment,
he said, “We¶re telling them
that that would be OK, but
you just have to follow the
rules.”
The amendment also
would change the de¿nition
of temporary ¿xed location to
“any business location, public
or private.”
The amendment also pro-
hibits services from 10 p.m. to
8 a.m., when all merchandise
and ancillary equipment must
be enclosed within a perma-
nent commercial structure or
removed from the temporary
¿xed location.
“We also wanted to make
sure there was an understand-
ing that itinerant merchants
could only work during
what¶s basically the daytime
hours,” Winstanley said.
Councilor Tita Montero
said she liked the change be-
cause sometimes entertain-
ment can cause a disturbance
during nighttime hours.
The penalty for violating
the ordinance is $500, but the
amendment seeks to increase
the penalty to $700.
Finally, the amendment
adds a new exception: “The
city reserves the right to limit
licensing in heavily congest-
ed areas during periods of
extreme crowding to protect
the safety and security of both
merchants and customers.”
There are certain times
during the year ² such as
Fourth of July or during the
Hood to Coast Relays ² that
are not appropriate for people
to be selling or soliciting as
itinerant merchants because
of congestion and other safety
concerns, Winstanley said.
“There¶s just too much ac-
tivity in the downtown core
area, which is where we see
the majority of itinerant mer-
chants,” he added.
The ordinance does not
apply to garage sales or
farmers markets, which are
licensed under a different or-
dinance.
The ordinance is slated for
possible adoption at the coun-
cil¶s meeting Monday.
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