Brad Rice from WCHS TV interviewed us for the Traveling West Virginia series. He was pretty brave donning a bee suit and gloves. Running the camera had to be an experience with the heavy leather gloves but he was able to get some great video to do his story. We talked for about 2 hours about all sorts of bee-related topics and he produced this most excellent story about our meeting. Within 5 minutes of the story’s first airing, I had 3 phone calls from people who wanted to buy honey! My kids were SO excited to have Brad come and do the story and their biggest concern was whether they would be on t.v. He was very gracious and assured them that they would have their chance at fame!
Category Archives: Nature
What the heck is this?
Abigail and I were harvesting the potatoes the other day and I dug this up…at least I think I dug it up. Anyhow, it ended up in the pile of dirt from which we were picking potatoes. At the top it seemed like a cocoon but it was very much larva-like at the bottom. I guess it was a moth or butterfly larva weaving its cocoon but I do not know what type.
That crazy thing was wiggling around and really freaking the kids out ( I, of course, was quite brave and unmoved by its actions). It was several inches long and full of ugly. I decided to just put it back in the dirt and hope for the best.
We are pretty fond of butterflies but I have sort of mixed reactions to moths…due to a bad experience with wax moths and my stored honey supers…I still can hardly talk about it!
Anyhow, we had a pretty good haul of potatoes and the kids were absolutely fantastic at helping me harvest them. I have never seen them work so hard as they did then.
Sunflowers!
I love sunflowers. I love to eat them. I love to look at them. I love to feed them to the birds. Honeybees make a very bright yellow wax from sunflower nectar. I love sunflower wax! Sunflowers just seem to be so hopeful. I know that sounds dumb but they grow so tall and so fast. They produce a huge head and a ton of seeds. It’s pretty bold to go for broke but that’s exactly what sunflowers seem to do. It just feels like nature’s optimism to me. Our sunflowers have really started to take off making for the perfect end to the summer garden.
The bumblebees seem to like them too. We’ve seen half a dozen or more on individual flowers lately. If we had room, I’d plant an entire field of the stuff!
Solar power!
Isaac discovered the power of the sun on Sunday. He lit a number of leaves on fire using Momaw and Popaw’s solar energy focuser – aka the magnifying glass. 
I bet he spent an half-an-hour setting piles of “stuff” on fire. The sun was hot so it didn’t take long to start a little blaze. We had a little educational time on the power of the sun and the danger of setting fires. Hopefully he’ll remember!
I remember loving to mess with matches and magniying glasses, etc when I was a kid. Fortunately, I never set anything big ablaze, but that was mostly dumb luck I think.
Isaac is so curious about so many things. It inspires me and makes me wish we could explore everything. For now, we will have to be content with experimenting as weekend scientists.
Birdhouse
There was an old junky shelf in our basement that was pieced together with a 1×12 and a 1×8 screwed together. I hated to just burn it up but wasn’t sure what to do with it. Isaac and Abigail had a visit at their Summer camp program from the Three Rivers Avian Center where they learned about bird habitats and their bird rescue program. The kids were so interested that they suggested we make some birdhouses out of the wood. We’ve had a house wren pair that have nested in an existing house the last three years and hatched 2 sets of eggs per year. That leaves us with a lot of house wrens around. I found some plans online for a house wren’s house and our wood measured out sufficient to make 3 houses. That should hopefully help our wren-friends. I ripped the boards to width and the kids sawed them to length by hand. They did a marvelous job on the first house. Abigail primed the wood and painted it in a rainbow motif. She assured me that the birds will like it and never go to the wrong house. She also thought the bees would enjoy the colors. It is really a beautiful paint job. We’ll probbaly work on the other two houses next weekend.
Abigail was a tremendous painter through it all. She applied several coats of primer to both the house and her legs. She waited patiently for each coat to dry…at least 10 minutes or so between coats. The best part was her work with colors. She was incredibly excited with her creation…with good reason!
She has not yet announced her design thoughts for the next houses. She is opinionated about everything though so I am sure she will let us know!
Corn
I mentioned in an earlier post that the bees were really working the corn tassels a couple of weeks ago. I got some pictures (click on them…they are pretty neat when full size!) of
honeybees as well as a bunch of
blue orchard mason bees that were around. It turns out that the starlings were really working the
corn too. This weekend, we had to harvest a bunch of the corn before the birds did. We ate some for supper this weekend and Emily
froze most of it still on the cob. She blanched the ears for 6 minutes then let them cool. Once cool and dry, she then wrapped them in cling-wrap and put the ears in freezer bags. We probably harvested half of the corn so we’ll see what the birds left us later in the week!
Honeybees
We were working in the garden this weekend and had to walk by the bees a number of times. They were very active and I really enjoyed hearing the sounds of the hive. The honey flow should be done until this Fall so I don’t know what they are so busy doing. We have noticed them in great number on the corn tassels but it seems strange that they would be so active for that.
Anyhow, we need to harvest the honey soon so I will know better then how this year has gone for them. Press the arrows below to hear some sounds I recorded near the hive. You may have to adjust your volume.
[audio:https://myhomeamongthehills.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/bees3.mp3] [audio:https://myhomeamongthehills.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/bees4.mp3] [audio:https://myhomeamongthehills.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/bees5.mp3]Deer!
On May 27, Emily and the kids witnessed a baby deer walk wobbly down into our yard. The deer was all legs and was clearly very newly born. The mother deer was nearby for awhile but we didn’t see where they went so assumed they left. A little later, Abigail yelled, “I see a deer!” I didn’t believe her at first but I followed her anyhow. There, under a tree lay a baby deer all curled up. The mother was no where to be found so we assumed she had abandoned her fawn. We decided to wait it out a bit down on our patio. Just a few minutes later, the fawn decided to come check us out. It was so friendly that we couldn’t help but touch it. I was concerned that we had ruined any chance of the mother accepting the baby again. Still, we decided to wait it out, this time inside the house since the fawn curled up under our patio furniture. Eventually (a long time later!), the mother came back through and picked up her fawn. We hadn’t seen them in awhile but the other day, we saw them (or another family of deer?) in the yard. This time, there were 2 fawns with the doe. I was relieved to see that all was well!
The hard thing for me to believe is that there are so many deer in Charleston. It was quite a thrill to see this all unfold. We see deer several times a week eating apples at the neighbors’ apple trees or the new leaves on my raspberries. I think we see more wild life here than we ever expected we would see in the city. There are goods and bads about that but, I love that we get to see the deer so close!
