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Honey Fest is exactly one month from today. What are you doing to prepare?
We’re buzzing right along with the planning. Margaret is working in collaboration with our “Bee Guy”, Bob, to hammer out the details.
Your I-can’t-”bee”lieve-that fact about bees for the day: Bees maintain a “central brood nest” temperature of 92 to 93 degrees Fahrenheit, regardless of whether the temperature outside the hive is 120 degrees or -20 degrees. Amazzzzzing!
Come join us on September 21 from 1 PM until 4 PM to celebrate the honeybees! Check out our website for the new Honey Fest flyer, and tell all of your friends!
Coming soon: a tasty honey recipe for you to try at home!
[Picture coming very, very soon -- I have to load it to the blog from my home computer]
This is look of progress… sort of. We’re rearranging offices this week at the Nature Center. It’s kind of a musical chairs situation with Jan and Jean going into Rich’s office, Rich going into Jan’s office, Margaret moving (officially) in with Nancy, and we have a whole room for resource materials/storage/file cabinets full of “stuff”. The Resource Room is where our office manager, Dana, is happily working away for the time being, and the auditorium (pictured above) is still a jumble of reception, exhibit and Dana’s office.
Sometime this fall, reception and Dana will move back downstairs in a new and exciting configuration. At the moment, we don’t have a concrete timeline on when that big move will happen, but I’m sure we all will welcome the day with open arms, staff and patron alike.
So what does this mean for you, our loyal Nature Center patron? Well…
1) When you come to the building, you will still enter up the front steps and into the auditorium. You will see the receptionist (Liana or Kay) at our makeshift front desk.
2) If you are coming for a public program, like one of the programs featured in our calendar of events, call ahead to see if the program is meeting at the barn, or at the wetland parking lot. If you forget to call, or just head out to the program on a whim, check at the building first. If no one is here, head down Otis Road to the wetland–it’s less than half a mile.
3) WE ARE SCHEDULING FALL PROGRAMS! School groups, scout groups, daycare groups, etc. Though everything upstairs looks like a mess, we have ample space to hold programs outdoors and indoors. To check out our available programs for K-6, click here. For younger children, click here. (Also, did you know that the Nature Center offers a scheduled set of programs for home schooled children? Click here to find out more.)
Give us a call at (319)362-0664, and be quick! September availability is going fast! basically gone! Try for October!
Wow! We’ve been busy at the Nature Center!
Summer Nature Camp is wrapping up. Our director, Rich Patterson, is celebrating 30 years of hard work at the Center next week. In the shop, we’re getting ready for a HUGE sale.
All that, and in a little over a month, we’ll be having our Honey Fest! That’s right, Autumn feels official when we start talking honey. Our Honey Fest will be on September 21st this year, from 1 PM to 4 PM right here at the barn. Come out for an afternoon of live music, beeswax candle making, beehive demonstrations and delicious prairie honey! Click here for more information.
Your I-can’t-”bee”lieve-that fact about bees for the day: Honeybees tap about two million flowers to make one pound (about 4 cups) of honey. Add into that equation the fact that each individual bee only makes 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey in it’s lifetime– That’s dedication!
Standing on the property today, it’s hard to visualize how high the water really got during the historic June flooding.
Can you see the “scum line”? Yuck!
Every day at the Nature Center, we strive to teach a respect for nature. After the flooding, we are simply in awe. We have to ask, how much of what happened could be prevented in the future?
The Nature Center works toward this prevention, and part of what we are here to do is leave open, green space. Sure, a lot of water all at once will always cause flooding, but having green space slows the potential. If everything is paved, water moves quickly, and ends up in our rivers and streams as fast as it rains down. Soil and vegetation hold moisture, and even when fully saturated it slows the water down. This is a pretty simplified explanation, and there are MANY reasons why there should be undeveloped places in our cities…
(Again, picture provided by the wonderful Marion Patterson. Creative Commons, okay?)
