COFFEE BREAK
B6 — THE OBSERVER & BAKER CITY HERALD
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2022
Late brother’s dying wish becomes one-sided eff ort
her children attend and seem to
have a good time. I call or text
her monthly, but I rarely receive
a reply. She did text me happy
birthday. I was OK with this
until I heard from my nephew
(Clark’s son) that there was a
memorial service for him. When
I asked him who was there, he
said everybody. It really hurt
because I wasn’t informed, nor
were any of my siblings.
I want to respect Clark’s
wishes, but even before this, Liz
didn’t seem to respect my nuclear
family. I don’t know what to do
going forward because I have
such sad and angry feelings over
not being invited to his memorial.
DEAR ABBY: I am one of
six adult siblings. Our youngest
brother, “Clark,” died of cancer
fi ve years ago. He was my best
friend. As kids, we did every-
thing together, and we remained
close as we got older. As he was
dying, Clark asked me to keep
his wife, “Liz,” and his chil-
dren in the family. I have tried
my best.
Every year, I have a large
family Christmas party. Liz and
have said something to the man-
ager or server and sat at another
table? If the manager had said
something to her, I doubt she
would have admitted what she
said. — NOT RIGHT IN OHIO
DEAR NOT RIGHT: You
were right not to challenge the
woman who said that. If she
wasn’t embarrassed when it
turned out you could hear clearly,
little you could say would have
shamed her. There was nothing
the restaurant manager could do
about this woman’s breach of eti-
quette. You, however, could have
asked to change your table if
you were no longer comfortable
seated next to that party.
and assumed neither of us could
hear. One of them told her friends
we were deaf and dumb. When the
server came to my table to take
our order and they realized I could
hear, they were visibly surprised.
The speaker did not appear
to be embarrassed by what she
had said. The woman’s back
was turned to my friend, so my
friend was unaware of it. (Thank
heavens, because my friend can
read lips.) I didn’t say anything at
the time and let it go.
Should I have? I didn’t because
their table was near ours, and I
was afraid the woman would have
gotten ruder and made the whole
dining experience bad. Should I
— CONFLICTED SIS IN THE
EAST
DEAR SIS: Please accept
my sympathy for the loss of your
brother. What you should do is call
your former sister-in-law and ask
her WHY you and your siblings
were excluded from the memo-
rial, which is a shocking oversight.
Then, if her apology is not satis-
factory, consider yourself relieved
of that deathbed promise, which
clearly hasn’t been appreciated.
DEAR ABBY: I was recently
in a restaurant with a friend who is
deaf. (I can hear.) We were using
American Sign Language to com-
municate. A group walked past us,
saw we were using sign language
NEWS OF THE WEIRD
Beekeepers using tracking devices to protect precious hives
In the past few weeks,
1,036 beehives worth hun-
dreds of thousands of dol-
lars were reported stolen
from orchards statewide,
authorities said. The largest
heist involved 384 bee-
hives that were taken from a
fi eld in Mendocino County,
prompting the state bee-
keepers association to off er
a $10,000 reward for infor-
mation leading to their
recovery.
“It’s hard to articu-
late how it feels to care for
your hives all year only
to have them stolen from
you,” Claire Tauzer wrote
on Facebook to spread the
word about the reward. A
day later, an anonymous
tipster led authorities to
recover most of the boxes
and a forklift stolen from
Tauzer’s family business
some 55 miles (88 kilome-
ters) away, at a rural prop-
erty in Yolo County. One
suspect was arrested.
Investigators also found
frames, the kinds used
to hold the honeycomb,
belonging to Helio Medina,
another beekeeper who lost
282 hives a year ago.
By DAISY NGUYEN
The Associated Press
WOODLAND, Calif. —
For a few frenzied weeks,
beekeepers from around
the United States truck bil-
lions of honeybees to Cal-
ifornia to rent them to
almond growers who need
the insects to pollinate the
state’s most valuable crop.
But as almond trees start
to bloom, blanketing entire
valleys in white and pink
fl owers, so begin beehive
thefts that have become so
prevalent that beekeepers
are now turning to GPS
tracking devices, surveil-
lance cameras and other
anti-theft technology to pro-
tect their precious colonies.
Hive thefts have been
reported elsewhere in the
country. Most recently three
hives containing about
60,000 bees taken from a
grocery chain’s garden in
central Pennsylvania. They
happen at a larger scale and
uniquely in California this
time of year because bees
are most in demand during
the largest pollination event
in the world.
“More often than not,
they steal to make money
and leave the bees to die,”
said Rowdy Jay Freeman,
a Butte County sheriff ’s
detective who has been
keeping track of hive thefts
since 2013.
A tightening supply of
bees and soaring pollina-
tion fees — jumping from
less than $50 to rent a hive
two decades ago to as much
as $230 per hive this year
— are likely motivating
beekeepers to go rogue.
The demand for bees
has steadily risen over the
last 20 years as popularity
of the healthy, crunchy nut
turned California into the
world’s biggest almond pro-
ducer. Accordingly, the
amount of land used to
grow almonds has more
than doubled to an esti-
mated 1.3 million acres.
Beekeepers have been
keeping up with that
growth by providing an
ever-increasing proportion
of the nation’s available
stock of hives. This year, a
survey of commercial bee-
keepers estimated it will
take 90% of honeybee colo-
Rich Pedroncelli/The Associated Press
Beekeeper Helio Medina displays a beehive frame outfi tted with a
GPS locator that will be installed in one of the beehives he rents out,
in Woodland, California, Thursday, Feb. 17, 2022. As almond fl owers
start to bloom, beekeepers rent their hives out to farmers to pollinate
California’s most valuable crop, but with the blossoms come beehive
thefts. Medina says last year he lost 282 hives estimated to be worth
$100,000, and is now installing GPS-enabled sensors to help fi nd
stolen hives in the future.
“We have do what we
can to protect ourselves.
Nobody can help us,”
Medina said.
Thefts usually happen
at night, when no one is in
the orchard and the bees are
back in their hives. The rus-
tler is usually a beekeeper or
someone familiar with the
transportation of bees.
Medina said the theft
devastated his apiary, so this
year he placed GPS trackers
inside the boxes. He also
strapped cable locks around
them and installed cam-
eras nearby. As the almond
bloom approached and the
hives became most valuable,
he drove around patrolling
the orchards in the dark.
weather
| Go to AccuWeather.com
AROUND OREGON AND THE REGION
Astoria
Longview
28/51
Kennewick
23/50
St. Helens
22/50
23/45
Condon
23/48
25/49
TONIGHT
FRI
SAT
SUN
MON
Sunny, but cold
Mostly sunny
and cold
Showers of rain
and snow
A couple of
showers
28 10
31 16
40 21
Eugene
0
0
0
0
22/49
35 16
35 24
38 25
44 31
1
0
0
0
Comfort Index™
La Grande
7
Comfort Index™
Enterprise
0
0
1
Comfort Index™
34
0
5
40 20
39 31
3
0
0
3
ALMANAC
NATION (for the 48 contiguous states)
High Tuesday
Low Tuesday
High: 100°
Low: -27°
Wettest: 3.78”
24°
12°
29°
13°
26°
15°
Tuesday
Trace
Month to date
Trace
Normal month to date 0.46
Year to date
0.38
Normal year to date
1.16
0.05
0.57
0.96
1.84
2.63
0.31
1.42
1.85
5.35
5.12
PRECIPITATION (inches)
AGRICULTURAL INFO.
HAY INFORMATION FRIDAY
Lowest relative humidity
Afternoon wind
Hours of sunshine
Evapotranspiration
30%
SSE at 4 to 8 mph
0.6
0.06
RESERVOIR STORAGE (through midnight Wednesday)
Phillips Reservoir
Unity Reservoir
Owyhee Reservoir
McKay Reservoir
Wallowa Lake
Thief Valley Reservoir
26/60
3% of capacity
32% of capacity
22% of capacity
42% of capacity
26% of capacity
50% of capacity
STREAM FLOWS (through midnight Tuesday)
Grande Ronde at Troy
1840 cfs
Thief Valley Reservoir near North Powder
1 cfs
Burnt River near Unity
7 cfs
Umatilla River near Gibbon
201 cfs
Minam River at Minam
129 cfs
Powder River near Richland
33 cfs
Zapata, Texas
Crosby, N.D.
Lexington, Tenn.
OREGON
High: 48°
Low: 6°
Wettest: 0.39”
North Bend
Meacham
Rome
SUN & MOON
FRI.
6:39 a.m. 6:38 a.m.
5:32 p.m. 5:34 p.m.
2:03 a.m. 3:17 a.m.
10:46 a.m. 11:37 a.m.
MOON PHASES
New
Mar 2
First
Mar 10
Full
Mar 17
24/52
Grants Pass
Last
Mar 24
Boise
14/36
Jordan Valley
9/30
Paisley
12/40
Frenchglen
8/34
Diamond
Grand View
Arock
9/31
14/34
11/30
Fields
19/58
10/33
Klamath Falls
9/45
Lakeview
9/42
McDermitt
Shown is Friday’s weather. Temperatures are Thursday night’s lows and Friday’s highs.
9/32
RECREATION FORECAST FRIDAY
SAT.
City
Hi/Lo/W Hi/Lo/W
Astoria
51/35/pc 50/39/r
Bend
49/18/s 51/24/pc
Boise
36/13/s 41/19/s
Brookings
56/39/s 55/44/c
Burns
34/9/s 39/14/s
Coos Bay
55/28/s 55/40/c
Corvallis
50/21/s 49/33/c
Council
29/-1/s
30/7/s
Elgin
37/6/s 39/12/s
Eugene
49/25/s 52/38/c
Hermiston
41/19/s 45/21/pc
Hood River
45/25/s 48/26/pc
Imnaha
39/16/s 46/28/s
John Day
39/15/s 47/25/s
Joseph
31/9/s 40/18/s
Kennewick
40/19/s 43/21/pc
Klamath Falls
45/8/s 51/24/s
Lakeview
42/6/s 47/20/s
11/38
Silver Lake
9/46
Medford
Brookings
Juntura
5/34
23/61
34/56
Ontario
15/38
Burns
8/40
Chiloquin
FRI.
Ice on the lower Susquehanna River in
Maryland began to break on Feb. 24,
1852. During the preceding 40 days, an ice
bridge across the river had been used for
the crossing of 1,378 loaded freight cars.
THU.
Beaver Marsh
REGIONAL CITIES
WEATHER HISTORY
Sunrise
Sunset
Moonrise
Moonset
7/40
8/43
Roseburg
Powers
Brothers
19/56
Coos Bay
TUESDAY EXTREMES
TEMPERATURES Baker City La Grande Elgin
Huntington
3/34
10/49
Oakridge
3/29
13/34
Seneca
Bend
Elkton
26/55
Comfort Index takes into account how the weather will feel based on a combination of factors. A rating of 10 feels
very comfortable while a rating of 0 feels very uncomfortable.
8/39
9/49
Florence
Council
0/29
John Day
7/46
Sisters
25/52
40 13
4/30
Baker City
Redmond
31/51
30/55
Halfway
Granite
1/33
18/53
23/50
Corvallis
11/43
20/50
Newport
Enterprise
1/34
7/35
Monument
19/47
Idanha
Salem
Clear and frigid
4
Elgin
4/37
La Grande
16/42
Maupin
29
16/38
Pendleton
The Dalles
Portland
Newberg
22/51
Lewiston
17/38
Hood River
14/38
25/53
0
Forecasts and graphics provided
by AccuWeather, Inc. ©2022
Walla Walla
18/40
Vancouver
21/51
TIllamook
Baker City
nies in the U.S. to pollinate
all the almond orchards.
“What that means is
that beekeepers are coming
from as far as New York
and Florida, and to get
them to come all that way,
pollinator fees have to rise,”
said Brittney Goodrich, an
agriculture economist at the
University of California at
Davis.
But bee populations
are notoriously unstable
due to a host of problems,
including disease, loss of
habitat and insecticides.
The drought that gripped
Western states last summer
also weakened colonies.
The lack of rain ravaged
wildfl owers that provide the
nectar that bees turn into
honey. Beekeepers had to
artifi cially supplement their
diet with sugar solutions
and pollen substitutes —
and incur more costs.
For beekeepers, the loss
of a hive means the loss of
income from honey produc-
tion and future pollination,
not to mention the expense
of managing the hive
throughout the year. They
say they hardly break even.
City
Lewiston
Longview
Meacham
Medford
Newport
Olympia
Ontario
Pasco
Pendleton
Portland
Powers
Redmond
Roseburg
Salem
Spokane
The Dalles
Ukiah
Walla Walla
FRI.
SAT.
Hi/Lo/W
38/20/s
50/23/s
36/8/s
58/21/s
51/37/s
47/23/s
38/17/s
40/18/s
38/15/s
49/30/s
60/31/s
46/14/s
52/28/pc
50/23/s
31/14/s
48/25/s
37/8/s
38/20/s
Hi/Lo/W
46/26/s
47/35/sh
39/14/s
57/33/pc
51/43/sh
47/34/sh
41/18/s
43/24/pc
44/20/pc
51/39/c
57/43/c
50/26/pc
54/40/pc
51/36/c
36/22/c
48/27/pc
46/20/pc
41/25/pc
Weather(W): s-sunny, pc-partly cloudy, c-cloudy, sh-showers, t-thunderstorms, r-rain,
sf-snow fl urries, sn-snow, i-ice
ANTHONY LAKES
PHILLIPS LAKE
Not as cold
Sunny and cold
22
13
33
4
MT. EMILY REC.
BROWNLEE RES.
Sunny, but cold
Cold with sunshine
28
17
35
8
EAGLE CAP WILD.
EMIGRANT ST. PARK
Turning colder
Sunny, but cold
24
-1
32
10
WALLOWA LAKE
MCKAY RESERVOIR
Sunny, but cold
Sunny, but cold
31
9
39
19
THIEF VALLEY RES.
RED BRIDGE ST. PARK
Sunny; quite cold
Sunny, but cold
29
4
Veterans Appreciation Day
at Anthony Lakes
Complementary skiing for Veterans and their families
February 28, 2022
Details at AnthonyLakes.com
35
16