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Ourfinaldayonthe California Beef Cattle Im- provement Association Tour saw us enjoying a continental breakfast on the lawn at Hi Mont Mo- tel before leaving the cool mountains and return- ing to the hot Sacramento valley. We returned on Hwy 44 in order to miss the high- way construction on Hwy 299. Shannon and Glenda Wooten, in Palo Cedro were our hosts at Woo- ten's Honey Bee Farm. Their Golden Queen's have been world famous since 1974. Bees develop from the queen side. Queens can live five years, while the drones in sum- mer have a 30 day lifes- pan. The queen's best pro- duction is in the first year, and bee keepers are encouraged to change queens every year. One and a half mil- lion hives are used for al- mond pollination in Cal- ifornia. It costs $ 225 a year to maintain a hive of bees. The farmers pay per frame of bees per acre, and bee keepers move in with a small amount of bees when trees are 5 % of bloom , and fill in the fol- lowing week with the bal- ance of bees wanted. We were warned to not wave our arms or slap at the bees; that would stir them up. There were 5,000 hives at the head- quarters with bees flying around. No one was bit- ten. They have between 12 and 13,000 hives in North- ern California. They sell 7,000 broods a year. That is a queen bee with drones in a small frame. June 15th is end of shipping because of the heat. Their gene pool is di- verse with 36 to 40 breeder queens. They use artificial insemination for breeding, Specific drones are chosen. A virgin queen is 6 to 8 days old, before flying looking for a drone to breed to. They are con- fined in a small hive, and when they are ready to breed AI, putting them to sleep with carbon dioxide. That is Glenda's job. Three days later the queen will lay eggs. Resistance to mites is an important trait they are breeding for. Before 1987 when the border was closed, they shipped many queens to Canada. Cur- rently only 4 breeders in the U.S. can ship to Can- ada after proving the queens do not carry the African bee gene or mites. In Washington, a bee breeder takes 15,000 queens a year, and they are used to monitor the carbon dioxide in the ap- ple sheds. At Wootens Golden Queens market- ing is word of mouth, and their base grows 8% per year. A limiting factor as to where the bee hives can be placed is: no wind, no bears, and 60 degrees or warmer. 495 hives were destroyed by a bear near Shasta College. They need to look at the hives every week. Fall River and Big Valley area and Siskiyou County are good locations. A good nutritional level makes healthy bees. Wooten's don't market honey because they use the natural honey for their bees. Did you know that honey is high in acid, be- cause it stops the growth of bacteria? Honey is good on burns. Everyone received a straw of star thistle honey, with the following facts on the tag: Honeybees are the backbone of US agricul- ture; pollinate 1/3 of the human diet; pollinate 50 different US crops valued at over $ 20 billion; polli- nate $ 3.2 billion of Cal- ifornia's almond produc- tion. Enroute to our next stop, Michelle Williams, a USDA employee who works in federal inspected meat plants dealing with HAACP in Northern Cali- fornia, and Nevada told us about her job. Our final ranch stop was at Byrd Cattle Co; in Los Molinos with a Vic Woolery tri tip luncheon, caesar salad, chili beans, buttered french bread and cookies. Our hosts were Dan and Chris Byrd with their chil- dren Ty and Brooke, plus the grandchildren. Dan said he purchased his first Angus cows in 1974 from Vermillion Ranch in Mon- tana. Bushwacker was the herd sire and three fourths of the herd traces back to him or his dam. Artifi- cial insemination and em- bryo transfer are used ex- tensively. The 14th annual "Best of Both Worlds" Angus bull and female sale will be September 5th, and every bull sells with individual residual feed intake (RFI) data and Zoetis 50K DNA percentile rankings. Driving back to Chico State Farm, Jess Dancer of Alturas Farming gave us an overview of their ranch because they are raising half blood cattle. When we were in Minnesota on a WLJ tour we saw these smaller cattle, called Low Line Angus. They have 500 half blood, medium size cows between 900 and 1,100 pounds, plus 1,000 cows in the commercial herd. They calve January to March, and calves weigh 500 pounds at weaning. California State Uni- versity, Chico professors Kasey DeAtley, Patrick Doyle and David Daley conducted research on the half bloods this spring. The 20 head of commer- cial steers and 20 head of half blood steers arrived on Jan. 1, and on Wednes- day the last 10 head were harvested. There was 100 lbs dif- ference in carcass weight, and the half bloods had choice and choice plus car- casses. The ranch also pro- duces 45 to 50,000 ton of hay. Jess mentioned 2,000 acres of wheat and barley too. At the farm, Garrett Wallis and student herds- man Don Sinnott gave the tour members an overview of the beef unit operation and current research. Over the years we have had some wonderful, in- formative tours. 2004 — CBCIA — Yolo Land & Cat- tle, Oak Ridge Angus, Cu- linary Institute of America — Greystone Restaurant, Clover Stornetta Dairy, Point Reyes National Sea- shore, Marin Sun Farms. 2005 — CBCIA — Har- ris Ranch feedlot, Jack Ranch, Varian Ranch, Hearst Castle, Hearst Ranch Dairy Barn, Santa Margarita Ranch, Cal Poly, PG&E's Pecho Ranch-Bob Blanchard. 2006 — CBCIA — Fresno State — Sequoia National Park. (We didn't attend; there were more stops.) 2007 — CBCIA — Ol- ive Oil , Tehama Angus Ranch, Bengard Ranch, Shasta Dam, Stan Sears, Macdoel- Prather Ranch, Sun Dial Bridge. 2009 — BIF — Railroad Museum, 5 Star Angus, Rancho Murieta Equine Complex, Terra d'Oro Win- ery, Duane Martin. 2010 — CBCIA — Am- track to Truckee, Mad- delena Ranch, Sierra Val- ley Ranch, three water projects on ranches, Red Clover Valley, Green Gulch Ranch, Kennedy Gold Mine. 2011 — CBCIA — Genoa Ranch, Northern Nevada Correctional Center — Full Circle Compost, Hone Ranch, Chris & Faye Gans- berg, Centennial Ranch, Hunewell Ranch, Benny Romero's, Bentley Agro- Dynamics, Genoa, Placer- ville. 2012 — CBCIA — Barb's Produce Stand, Buffalo Ranch, Redwoods, Peter Bussman redwoods, Fern Cottage, Humboldt Grass Fed Beef, Carson Mansion, Redwood Sawmill, Bear Republic Brewing Co.; Oak Ridge Angus, Castello Di Amorosa. 2013 — CBCIA — AGCO Hay Co.; Big Creek Lumber Co.; Cal Poly's Swanton Pacific Ranch, Cal Poly, Teixeira Cat- tle Co.; Flag is Up Farms, Santa Ynez Historical So- ciety, Peach Tree Ranch, Mission San Juan Bau- tista. 2014 — CBCIA — Kish's Bucking Bulls, Bidwell Ranch, Fall River Mills- Prather Ranch, Burney Falls State Park, Bengard Ranch, Wooten's Queen Bees, Byrd Cattle Co.; Chico State Farm. JeanBartonhasbeen writing her column in the Daily News since the early 1990s. She can be reached by e-mail at jbarton2013@ gmail.com. JEANBARTON Beefcattletour concludes in valley COURTESYPHOTO California Beef Cattle Improvement Tour leader Abbie Nelson of 5Star Angus thanking Shannon and Glenda Wooten, Wooten's Golden Queens for the informative presentation about queen bees. Jacey Laine Pray, of Red Bluff is a new junior mem- ber of the American Angus Association, reports Bryce Schumann, CEO of the na- tional organization with headquarters in Saint Jo- seph, Missouri. Junior members of the association are eligible to register cattle in the asso- ciation, participate in pro- grams conducted by the National Junior Angus Association and take part in association-sponsored shows and other national and regional events. The American Angus Association is the larg- est beef breed association in the world, with nearly 24,000 active adult and junior members. ANGUS Pray joins national organization By David A. Lieb Associated Press JEFFERSON CITY, MO. In the nation's agricultural heartland, farming is more than a multibillion-dollar industry that feeds the world. It could be on track to become a right, writ- ten into law alongside the freedom of speech and re- ligion. Some powerful agricul- ture interests want to de- clare farming a right at the state level as part of a wider campaign to for- tify the ag industry against crusades by animal-wel- fare activists and oppo- nents of genetically mod- ified crops. The emerging battle could have lasting reper- cussions for the nation's food supply and for the millions of people world- wide who depend on U.S. agricultural exports. It's also possible that the right- to-farm idea could sputter as a merely symbolic ges- ture that carries little prac- tical effect beyond driv- ing up voter turnout in lo- cal elections. "A couple of years from now, we might say this was the beginning of the trend," said Rusty Rumley, a senior staff at- torney at the National Agricultural Law Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas. But "we really don't even know what they're going to mean." Animal advocates and other groups are increas- ingly urging consumers, grocers and restaurants to pay as much atten- tion to how their food is raised as to how it tastes. Their goals include try- ing to curtail what they consider cruel methods of raising livestock and unsafe ways of growing food. Those efforts are help- ing to fuel the right-to- farm movement in the Midwest, where the right has already won approval in North Dakota and In- diana. It goes next to Missouri voters in an Aug. 5 election. Similar measures passed both chambers of the Okla- homa Legislature earlier this year before dying in a conference commit- tee. And they could soon spread elsewhere. The uncertainty sur- rounding the proposals stems from the vague wording of the mea- sures, which have yet to be tested in court. Missouri's proposed constitutional amend- ment asks voters whether the right "to engage in farming and ranching practices shall be forever guaranteed." Indiana's new measure — which was written into state law but not en- shrined in the constitu- tion— protects the rights of farmers to use "gener- ally accepted" practices, including "the use of ever-changing technol- ogy." The North Dakota measure prohibits any law that "abridges the right of farmers and ranchers to employ agricultural tech- nology, modern livestock production and ranching practices." Supporters hope the wording provides a legal shield against initiatives that would restrict particu- lar farming methods, such as those modeled after a California law setting min- imum cage space for hens or policies in Florida and Ohio that bar tight pens for pregnant pigs. Others hope to pre-empt any proposals to ban genetically modi- fied crops similar to ones recently passed in south- ern Oregon. "Agriculture's had a lot folks that's been trying to come down on our farms and tell us what we can and cannot do," said Neal Bredehoeft, a corn and soy- bean farmer who supports the Missouri measure. He added: "This gives us a lit- tle bit of protection." Bredehoeft gave $100 to the political group back- ing Missouri's ballot mea- sure. His money is be- ing mixed with five-figure checks from the state corn and pork associations, the Farm Bureau and busi- nesses with strong finan- cial stakes in rural Amer- ica, such as electric coop- eratives and a farm-credit organization. NATION Ag ri cu lt ur e in du st ry s ee ks to create right to farm ASSOCIATED PRESS Neal Bredehoe of Alma, Mo., in Lafayette County, examines his corn for any evidence of Japanese beetles, which he said are a serious concern for corn farmers. 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