Bees

There was a news story on TV last night about a small child having her birthday party ruined by a swarm of bees settling in the midst of the invited guests. A photograph showed a large swarm of approximately 20, 000 bees. I wouldn’t have been able to guess the number of bees, but I thought the swarm looked enormous in the picture.

When our family lived on the asparagus farm, Dad was always sending for the free government booklets on subjects he was interested in and the whole family enjoyed reading them as much as he did. After reading a booklet on bees, Mom and Dad decided raising bees was a plausible endeavor since we lived in the country and had acres of red raspberries, black berries, and strawberries as well as fields of corn and the huge gardens we planted every year.

Dad began reading and studying how to raise bees. He sent for catalogs offering queen bees and related equipment for sale, and as he thumbed thru he pages, he got all of us children involved in the project of choosing which strain of queen bee we should buy. We became quite knowledgeable about bees and how to care for them.

The first bees were purchased from a South Carolina company and it wasn’t long before the several hives we started with increased to a dozen or more. Every evening when Dad got home from the office, we kids helped him check the hives. He wore long sleeves and a hat with gauze draped over it that protected him from bee stings, but as time passed, he became comfortable working with the bees using only the smoker. A few puffs of smoke caused the bees to keep their distance when he checked the honey frames inside the hives.

Dad did get stung on occasion but the bees were quite docile unless provoked. Even the smallest children walked along side dad as he used the smoker and rarely got a bee sting.
I don’t remember how many frames were in each hive but when one was filled with honey it was replaced with an empty frame for the bees to fill. The hives were placed some distance in back of the house and beyond the long rows of berry bushes separating the asparagus fields from the field corn. The ground inclined slightly and we could see the hives from one corner of the back yard.

One summer day one of the smaller children spotted bees starting to swarm and sounded the alarm. We all raced up the hill hoping to catch it. Dad had told us that tossing clods of dirt into the air among the bees would often cause them to settle near the old hive and we might be able to retrieve it. In that case, he would be able to move it into a hive when he came home from the office.

We three older ones, Adeline, Mickey and I, tossed clods and yelled instructions to each other. Suddenly, Charles, who was about 12 or 13 years old, stuck his arm out. Low and behold, the swarm landed on it! You can imagine the excitement! Someone ran to get the smoker, but before it came, Charles calmly shook the bees off his arm into an empty hive without a single sting. You can imagine how proud he was when Dad heard how the swarm was caught! Later, as an adult, Charles found that he was allergic to bees. His Dr. warned him of the danger and he spent the rest of his life avoiding bees and hornets.

Computers and Telephones

I am constantly amazed at the magic of computers and telephones. I realize they are objects made of materials with qualities that transform frequencies, magnetism and, god only knows what else, into wonderful machines that control and regulate all manner of things; electricity, graphics, and fuel consumption. They even control space. As tools of business and governments, today’s computerized phones have a capacity for knowledge and communication that seems endless. Videos, music, games and calculators, can all be encapsulated inside a mini phone that can be held in one’s hand.

I remember when my sister Adeline and I had play conversations using old wooden wall phones with bells that Dad brought home from the telephone office where he worked. They were beyond repair, but made wonderful toys. From time to time he would also bring insulators that were used to attach wires to telephone poles. They were solid, heavy pieces of colored blue or green glass, about the size of a man’s fist.

When we lived in the old Victorian house on Bliss Blvd in Iowa Falls, the phone was a black wall model in the dining room next to the entrance to the kitchen. I could stand on tip toe to talk into the mouth piece but Adeline had to stand on a stool. When Mom let us phone the grocery store with an order for the morning or afternoon delivery, we raced to be the first one to the phone, because the winner often had permission to add a treat to the order.

Our house phones were usually black wall phones, centrally located on the first floor of the various houses we lived in. The ringing of the bell was loud enough to be heard from anywhere in the house or yard. If the phone rang during the night, one had to go down stairs to answer it. The only way to keep a conversation from being overheard was to talk very softly or use the phone when no one was around.

When making a call, operators asked “number please” and made the connection. You could hear the phone ringing at the other end but after so many rings, the operator would come on line and tell you there was no answer. Many times we didn’t bother to use a phone number; we just told the operator who or what business we wanted. The intimacy of a small town was lost in the larger cities but you could call ‘information’ to ask the operator to look up the number and to ring it for you. In old movies you often see and hear people making phone calls like we used to.

Eventually we graduated to black table phones with 25 foot cords, which let us walk around as we talked or carried it to a comfortable place to sit while talking. The first colored phone I saw was Grandma A’s pink princess phone. It wasn’t much more than a receiver resting on a base of the same size.

At Hillcrest, our house in Redwood City, the phone was in a private booth paneled in mahogany wood. It was located in the middle of a long hall dividing the day rooms from bedrooms. If the conversation was a long one, it got rather stuffy with the door closed. If anyone was using the phone when a call had to be made, a knock on the door was a signal to finish.

I remember sitting in that booth for hours talking to my husband. He was in New York waiting to be shipped over seas during WWII. We never knew if our conversation would be the last until the end of the war, but as the week progressed, he was able to phone me 3 or 4 more times. During those evenings I monopolized the phone. It was difficult to make phone connections from the east coast to west coast; consequently, I was on pins and needles until the phone rang. The family was very considerate and gave me total use of the phone when he called.

Telephones became such a part of daily life after the war families began to have more than one phone in the house; bedrooms, kitchens and even bathrooms. A late night phone call no longer indicated an emergency or bad news. Long distance calls were no longer limited to holidays and teens got their own phones.

Now you can leave a message if the party you are calling isn’t home or doesn’t want to answer the phone. In fact you don’t even have to use a phone to chat. You can use your computer and choose Instant Messaging or Voice mail. I have a cell phone that has every bell and whistle imaginable. It’s private, and I can wear it around my neck on a ribbon. I don’t know if I have a computer with a phone inside or a telephone with a computer inside. It’s all magic to me!

Puzzle Solution

Puzzles

Here is a puzzle for those who like to solve them:

Arrange eight squares so there are four rows of three squares each.

I accidentally did this when I was trying to develop a design pattern. Not being a puzzle person, I was rather astonished to see what I had done. This may not qualify as a real puzzle if there is a criterion for such.

The Sunday morning PBS radio program usually has a few minutes devoted to puzzles and word games interspersed among their current news and book reviews that I like to listen to, but I rarely have success solving them.

My dear sister-in-law, Mary, got me started on crossword puzzles, but I only do those advertised as ‘Easy, No Dictionary Required’. Even so, I cheat by checking the spelling; ‘el’ or ‘le’. When stumped, I wait about 10 seconds for a brain wave to kick in, but if it doesn’t, I peek at the answers. Mary is a real crossword puzzle person. For years she has done the daily crossword in the newspaper and finishes them before her second cup of coffee!

All forms of math puzzles are enigmas to me. I do try simple Sudoku problems but scanning for the solution is tedious and I get impatient. I prefer the more visual puzzles like Tangrams or Mazes. Fractals and jigsaws are classes unto themselves. Puzzles are problems posed as entertainment AND, they are also diabolically clever and frustratingly tricky.

The Diamond 16 puzzle can be seen at: http://finitegeometry.org/sc/16/puzzle

For a tamgram go to: http://www.enchantedmind.com/puzzles/tangram/tangram.html

(editor's note: solution will be shown in a few days)