nature grapevine ’s · up-close view of honeybees. visitors who encounter bees, either in one of...

The ABCs of Beesby

Wayne Henderek

Honeybees are absolutely amazing creatures. Of all the naturalistic topics I have written about, they are arguably the most interesting at least, to me. Washington Crossing State Park has had an observation honeybee hive in the Nature Center for years (this is an active beehive sandwiched between two sheets of glass). In 1996, we discontinued the exhibit because of the development of a continent-wide epidemic of parasitic mites. I can truly say that I had missed the bees. Due to popular demand, we installed a new observation hive the following year and we have been back in the “bee business” ever since. We have occasionally had problems maintaining our hive, but have been relatively successful in providing curious visitors with an up-close view of honeybees. Visitors who encounter bees, either in one of our interpretive programs or via the observation hive, often recoil with the knowledge that honeybees are capable of stinging. Itʼs perfectly okay from my perspective, for folks to dislike things in nature whether they are bees, snakes, bats, slugs or anything else for that matter. However, I often like to point out to some of our more “bee-phobic” visitors that honeybees are not at all anxious to sting people. I remind them that if they have ever been stung, chances are that it was not a honeybee that inflicted the sting but rather, a yellow jacket. Yellow jackets look superfi-cially somewhat like honeybees but are in fact, very aggressive ground-nesting wasps. On the other hand, honeybees are an extremely important component of our environment. This is true not merely because they are the only producers of harvestable honey. Honeybees are essential pollinators of a multitude of fruit and vegetable crops, wildflowers, forest trees and numerous domestic and wild plants all of which go on to produce food and other resources for people, livestock and wildlife. Were it not for the honeybee, good things like strawberries, blueberries, grapes, bananas, apples, cherries, peaches, plums and so on would at best, be much less available.

Bee Basics

The honeybee (Apis mellifera) belongs to the hyme-noptera, an order of insects generally characterized in adults by two pair of membranal wings, chewing mouth parts, complete metamorphosis and a prominently tapered section between the

thorax and abdomen. In addition to bees, the order includes ants, wasps and sawflies. The bee family is comprised of honeybees, bumblebees, carpenter bees, flower bees, sweat bees, leafcutting bees and many other bee species. Almost all bee species gather nectar and pollen, whereas wasps tend to feed on other inverte-brates The honeybee originated in tropical Asia and migrated to Africa and Europe via the Middle East. The species is not native to North America. It is believed that Columbus and the various settlers that followed brought the first honeybees to the New World. Honeybees, are social insects. A colony of honeybees is made up of 50,000 - 80,000 individuals almost all of which are females related by a single mother, the queen. A wild bee colony will reside in tree cavities rock crevices, buildings and other nooks and crannies where a wax structure known as the honeycomb and brood nest is located. Domesticated bees live in a box-like man made container, referred to as the hive. A colony of honeybees functions more or less like an organism. It breaths, feeds, migrates, reproduces and even dies in unison. An indi-vidual bee can not survive long apart from its colony and in fact, when separated will loose its entire purpose for living.

The life of the honeybee starts with the queen who travels around the hive depositing eggs in carefully prepared hexagonal wax brood cells in the brood nest. The queen is not a monarch in the sense that she rules the hive, but could more

New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection e Division of Parks and Forestry

NATURE’SGrapevineWASHINGTON CROSSING STATE PARK, NJ Summer 2012

accurately be described as an egg-laying slave of the colony. Her sole function in life is to lay eggs; and a healthy queen will lay as many as 3000 each day. If she fails in this task, she will be driven from the hive and a new queen will be reared. All her other needs including feeding, watering, temperature regulation, cleaning and grooming are taken care of for her by other bees. The queen is the only fertile female in the colony. She mates once early in life in fl ight, with a male or drone, preferably from another hive. She stores the sperm from that encounter in her abdomen for about three years and uses it to fertilize her eggs as she lays them. Fertilized eggs develop into female workers and infertile eggs develop into drones. The queen is fed exclusively a high protein, high carbohydrate substance known as royal jelly which is secreted from glands near the mouth of certain worker bees. The queen is about half again as large as most of the other bees and she is the longest-lived bee in the colony, surviving three or four years.

The Division of Labor and Life

Honeybee colonies are organized into a sort of caste sys-tem in which the role of individual bees changes as they develop. A small white grub-like larva will hatch out of a freshly laid egg in about three days. For three days, bee larvae are fed royal jelly and then most are weaned onto a diet of pollen and honey. If the colony wishes to produce a new queen, they will keep the larva on a diet of royal jelly and it will develop into a queen. Ten days after hatching, the larva spins a silk cocoon within its cell and workers will cap the cell with wax. The insect will pupate in its cell for about one week. After chewing its way out, the new adult worker will groom herself, then return to her cell and begin cleaning it out and preparing it for another egg. She will spend the fi rst few days of her adult life as a housekeeper going from cell to cell cleaning . Forty minutes of labor are necessary in order to prepare a single cell for egg deposition. 15 - 30 differ-ent housekeepers will participate in this task and the queen will not lay an egg in a cell unless it has been properly cleaned and polished. Special royal jelly feeding glands in the head of the older housekeeper will develop and the housekeeper will change castes, transforming into a nurse. The nurse bee will travel through the hive feeding and tending larvae. The average larva will be checked 1300 times each day and will receive a total of eight hours of attention from various nurses in its one week larval stage. Older nurses will sometimes take on the role of queen keeper. The queen keeperʼs job is to feed and tend the queen. As these bees contact the queen a chemical messenger or phero-mone, from the queenʼs body rubs off on to them and spreads throughout the hive as these queen keepers are in turn touched by other bees. The presence of this pheromone signals the colony that the queen is alive and well and it gives the colony a charact-eristic scent which aids the home bees to identify and defend against foreign honeybees who would enter the hive in order to steal honey. The lack of this pheromone in the hive will induce the colony to begin producing new queens.

A typical honeybee colony will consist of three different kinds of bees. Workers (left) are all sisters and they make up the overwhelming majority of bees in the colony. A single reproductive female, or queen (center) is the mother of all the bees in the colony. Male bees are referred to as drones (right) are more plump than workers and might be present in greater or lesser numbers depending on the time of year.

The mandibular feeding glands in the nurse will atrophy with time and abdominal wax glands will develop trig-gering another caste shift from nurse to waxer / food maker. As a food maker, the bee will collect nectar and pollen from bees returning to the hive and pack it into food cells in the hive. The various members of this caste will take nectar into their mouths evaporate some of the moisture and add products which transform the nectar into honey. Honey is the principal food source of honeybees. It is composed of about 73% fructose and glucose in roughly equal amounts, with less than 20% water and with trace amounts of other substances. Honey also contains hydrogen peroxide that prevents spoiling. Waxers ingest honey and pollen and convert it into small fl akes of wax that are secreted from the abdomen. Waxers will form chains of bees by linking legs during comb building operations and pass wax fl akes along the chain to the end bees who use their legs and mandibles to manipulate the fl akes into the familiar six-sided comb cells. The body heat generated in this process keeps the wax warm enough to be malleable. Beeswax is metabolically expensive to produce. A colony of bees will have to consume close to 17 ounces of honey and pollen in order to manufacture a single ounce of wax. However, the hexagonal shape of the cells in the honeycomb is the perfect confi guration for its intended purpose, maximizing the amount of comb storage space and structural integrity while minimizing the amount of beeswax necessary for construction. The wax glands shut down at about two weeks of age and the bee will begin the role of colony guard taking up an alert posture by the hive entrance in order to defend against wasps, birds, mammals hive parasites and burglar bees from other colonies. The honeybeeʼs famous weapon, the stinger, is a curious sort of instrument. Barbs on the stinger cause it to become lodged in the victimʼs fl esh. As the bee fl ies away, she leaves behind an entire package including the stinger and a venom gland along with a set of muscles that continue to

Natureʼs Grapevine Summer 2012


our visible light spectrum excluding the red wave length and they can see ultraviolet light (UV) and polarized light. UV visibility allows them to see what would otherwise, be invisible pigmenta-tion on certain fl owers which act as landing markers, guiding the insects to the nectar. Polarized light vision enables honeybees to see the sun on cloudy days so that it might be used for navigation. Honeybees cannot hear airborne sounds but, membranes in their legs and antennae enable them to detect sound-like vibrations on vegetation as well as in the hive. The forager bee will spend roughly nine days foraging. At a ripe old age of about 4+ weeks, with her wings tattered and torn and her fl ight muscles worn out the bee dies in obscurity somewhere outside the hive. She will have fl own a total of about 500 miles and gathered enough nectar to make less than two grams of honey yet in so doing she will have served her colony to her fullest having literally worked herself to death.

Bee Dance

One of the most fascinating aspects of honeybee be-havior is the ability of foragers to communicate the location of a food source to other foragers via the waggle dance and circle dance. Upon returning to the hive, a nectar and pollen laden bee will offer a taste of her prize to other bees in order to spark their interest. She will then proceed to dance in the rough pattern of a fi gure 8. When she crosses in the middle of the pattern, she waggles her abdomen. Using the sun as a reference point, the



contract even while detached from the bee. These contracting muscles drive the stinger deeper into the wound and continue to squeeze additional venom into the sting site while releasing a pheromone into the air from yet, another gland on the sting ap-paratus, which signals other bees to sting near the same location. The irony in all this cold-blooded effi ciency is the fact that the rear of the stinging beeʼs abdomen is torn wide open and the in-sect soon bleeds to death. Hence, the honeybee only stings once. The queen possesses two unbarbed stingers and runs little risk of suicide when using them in battle with rival queens. Drones have no stinger. Wasps, hornets and bumblebees incidentally, have unbarbed stingers and are capable of infl icting multiple stings.

Waggle Dance In order to notify her coworkers of the loca-tion of a nectar source, a returning forager will dance a fi gure-eight pattern in the hive, waggling the abdomen as she moves through the middle of the dance pattern. The orien-tation of the body at this point relative to the straight up position, corresponds the angle of the direction to the target nectar source with respect to the sun. In this illustration the fl owers would be located 30° to the left of the sun.

Guard bees (older than two weeks) will begin taking short practice fl ights at midday. By the third week of age, the fi nal caste transformation takes place and the guard becomes a forager who will eventually search for nectar and pollen laden fl owers up to seven miles from the hive. The job of a forager bee is to locate food sources, to recruit help by telling other foragers where those resources are and to bring as much nectar and pollen back to the hive as possible. Honeybees are well equipped to accomplish this task. For starters, they have stout hair-like pro-jections on their legs called pollen baskets for carrying pollen and a special stomach for transporting nectar. They are capable of detecting over 700 fl oral scents. The honeybeeʼs visual acuity is low by human standards, ( about 20/2000) but they can see all of

This newsletter is available free of charge electroni-cally . It can be downloaded at the web address below. Requests to be included on the emailing list may be made by contacting the Nature Center.

Phone..........(609) 737-0609Fax...............(609) [email protected] - Sat 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. Sun 12:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. Closed Mon and TuesWebsite........www.state.nj.us/dep/parksandforests/ parks/washcros.html

Park Naturalist& Newsletter Editor......Wayne Henderek

the remaining queen cells killing their occupants. If two queens emerge simultaneously, a battle might ensue with the victor becoming the new queen. If multiple queens develop, sometimes the bees will swarm again with one queen leaving with about half the colony. After establishing dominance, the queen leaves the hive in order to locate a drone to mate with. She returns to the hive after mating and settles into her lifelong activity of oviposi-tion, or egg-laying. I recall seeing honeybees more or less, everywhere when I was a child. They seemed to be on virtually every clover flower in my yard on warm summer afternoons, and on every ornamental in my motherʼs flower beds. A generation later, my children have to look much harder to find bees in our flowered yard. The North American honeybee population has come under an assault in recent years that would seem to explain the dif-ference. Two species of bee-infesting mites showed up in the United States during the mid 1980s. Tracheal mites infect the honeybeeʼs abdominal breathing apparatus. They are believed to have destroyed at least a half of the nationʼs bee colonies between 1985 and 1991. Varroa mites are an external honeybee parasite that weaken bees and render them susceptible to other afflictions. Both of these problems are manageable in most domesticated bee colonies. Wild bee colonies of course, cannot be treated and observation hives such as the one in the Nature Center are especially vulnerable due to the smaller colony size of these hives. As previously referenced, keeping our observation hives healthy has been quite challenging since the emergence of these parasites and a newer disorder called CCS or Colony Col-lapse Syndrome. Writing on a topic like honeybees for a newsletter like Natureʼs Grapevine is something of a contest. Volumes have been written on the subject and it is difficult to ascertain what information would be most useful to the majority of folks who visit our facility. Needless to say, this article has barely scratched the surface. I have not for example, covered beekeeping, honey production, the history of apiculture, bee research, health issues, CCS, bees in winter, africanized bees, nor, have I gone into many of the very interesting details that infuse the subject. What I have tried to do, is provide information based on the bee questions people ask when they visit the Nature Center. I hope this synop-sis will be helpful. Feel free to stop by the WCSP Nature Center and visit this most fascinating of live exhibits, the observation beehive. Also, please take the liberty of asking questions of our staff when you visit. _____________________________________Wayne Henderek is the park naturalist at Washington Crossing State Park. This article was reprinted from the Spring 2000 edition of Natureʼs Grapevine

Volunteer NotesMiddle school students from the Pennington School came out to realign one of our trails in order to mitigate an erosion problem.

angle of her body with respect to a straight up position is equiva-lent to the angle of the food source with respect to the sun. The number and intensity of the waggles indicate the distance to the food source, with a slow waggle indicating greater distances and each waggle corresponding to approximately twenty yards. The location of flowers within 100 yards of the hive is signaled with a slightly different circular dance pattern.

Moving On

Honeybees swarm when conditions in and around the colonyʼs location become unsuitable or when the colony outgrows the hive. Swarming is simply the colonyʼs way of reproducing itself. Swarming behavior commences when certain forager/scout bees exit the hive to search for a new location. Upon their successful return, the bees in the colony will be-come restless and will begin gorging on honey. The level of excitement in the hive will quickly increase to the point of near boisterous frenzy. The behavior will climax when approximately half the colonyʼs population rush out of the hive with the queen. After a few minutes of wildly flying about near the hive entrance, the swarming bees will congregate into a tight cluster suspended from a nearby tree limb with the queen in the center. After a period of time in this swarm cluster, they will separate and fly en mass, to the new location and begin building the new honeycomb and brood nest.

Children learn about honeybees at the Nature Centerʼs ob-servation beehive.

The remaining bees in the original hive will begin producing several new queens sometime just prior to, or immedi-ately after swarming. They do this by elongating and reorienting some of the existing cells in the hive into a vertical position. The larva that hatch out in those queen cells are put on an exclusive diet of royal jelly. Pupation in the queen cells follows the larval feeding stage. The first queen to emerge will usually sting into





Pat Chichon, Lambertvile, provided a great wild edible plant walk.

Gene Ramsey, Pennington, and Larry Kane, Lawrenceville, came out with their telescopes on Memorial Day Weekend to provide park visitors with detailed views of the sun. Gene and Larry are members of the Amateur Astronomers Association of Princeton.

Jim Silk, Hamilton, a reconstructive lithic technologist and stone tool maker, demonstrated stone tool making techniques of the Paleo-Indian era.

Nettie Rekowski, Ewing, and Cheryl Burgos both assisted with staffing the Nature Center during programs.

6-8 grade students from the Pennington School realigned a trail near the Nature Center.

Around the ParkWarren Coker has come on board as a Seasonal Interpretive Specialist at the Nature Center. Warren comes to us with a great deal of interpretive experience having worked or volunteered at a variety of facilities in North Carolina, Virginia and New Jersey. Warren will be leading interpretive programs here in WCSP and will be assisting with the day-to-day operation of the Nature Center during the summer season. He lives in Lawrenceville. Please note: The Nature Center which normally opens at noon on Sundays will be opening early at 9:00 a.m. during the summer months due to Warrenʼs availability to staff the facility.

School groups, preschool groups, home school groups, scout groups and community groups from Princeton, Hamilton, Pennington, Lawrenceville, Burlington, Plainfield/Edison, Titus-ville and Hopewell Twp. all visited the WCSP Nature Center this spring. The activities provided for these groups included: trail hikes, geology, shelter building, pond studies, stream studies, for-estry, ecology, tracking and natural dyes. Group leaders wishing to schedule similar programs for the summer and autumn seasons should give us a call.

Astronomy Seminar

The Amateur Astronomers Association of Princeton (AAAP) will be offering an astronomy seminar over the course of four Friday evenings at the WCSP Nature Center late this summer and early autumn. The seminar will be conducted by David W. Letcher and assisted by Gene Ramsey both of AAAP. The seminar will commence at 7:30 p.m. on Friday September 14, (Backyard Astronomy) and will follow on Fridays September 21, (Telescopes for Amateurs) September 28 (The Solar System) and October 5 (Stars, Star Clusters, and Galaxies). An additional Sat-urday will be scheduled during daylight hours at a later date for solar observing. Each Friday class will consist of a lecture/dis-cussion augmented with contemporary photographs and videos that illustrate ideas and concepts of the science of astronomy. The classes at the Nature Center will be one hour in duration and will be followed with demonstrations at the adjacent AAAP Simpson Observatory as weather permits. Access to the Nature Center and the observatory will be via the Phillips Farm/ soccer fields/group camping entrance on Bear Tavern Rd., since the parkʼs main entrance will be closed when the classes begin. Advanced reg-istration is required for each session. To register, call the Nature Center at (609) 737-0609. Class size is limited and registration will be available on a first come, first served basis. Registra-tion will open on Aug. 1, 2012. AAAP will issue a certificate of completion for anyone who attends all four classes. The seminar will be designed for participants at the pre-teen – adult level. For further information, see the enclosed summer program schedule or, call the Nature Center at the phone number listed above in the credit box.



SUMMER PROGRAMSat the

NATURE CENTERThe following is a list of activities being offered through the Nature Center at Washington Crossing State Park in Titusville, NJ. These events are available to families and individuals only. Programs for scouts, schools, camps and other groups are scheduled via phone call by special arrangement. Some programs are offered without registration requirements; some will require advanced registration. A fee of $5.00 per car ($7.00 out-of-state) will be charged to all motor vehicles entering the park for daytime programs on weekends and holidays through Monday 9/3 (Labor Day). Programs will initially meet at the Nature Center unless otherwise indicated. Attendance is limited and is available on a first-come, first-served basis. All children must be accompanied by an adult. In the event of inclement weather, some programs might be canceled. It is always advisable to call ahead before coming out. Phone: (609) 737-0609.

NATURAL DYES (all ages) Sunday July 1, 1:30 - 3:30 p.m. Many interesting colors can be derived from wild plants. Come out to learn how several of our more common plants can be coaxed to yield dyes for coloring natural fabrics and take home a few samples of your own. Advanced registration required. Park vehicle entrance fee applies

NIGHT HIKE (6 yrs. - adult) Saturday July 7, 8:30 p.m. Explore the park for nature at night and have some good old fashioned fun on this naturalist-guided hike and campfire. Advanced registration required. Bring a flashlight. Enter the park from the entrance on Bear Tavern Rd (Phillips Farm/ Group Camping Entrance) and follow the event signs. to the Nature Center. Advanced registration required

FAMILY NATURE WALK (all ages) Sunday July 15, 1:30 - 2:30 p.m. Join us for an informal naturalist-guided trail walk. Park vehicle entrance fee; $5.00 per car

FAMILY NATURE WALK (all ages) Saturday July 21, 1:00 - 2:00 p.m. Join us for an informal naturalist-guided trail walk. Park vehicle entrance fee applies

BACKPACKING IN THE 21ST CENTURY (all ages) Sunday July 22, 1:30 - 3:00 p.m. Hiking and backpacking are wonderful ways to enjoy the great outdoors. Learn about some of the most recent developments in backpacking gear. Demonstrations will in-clude how to best fit and load a backpack for best comfort and function. Topics will include outdoor footwear, pack types and pur-poses, modern tents, new water purification methods, and modern camp stoves. “Leave No Trace” guidelines and suggestions will be discussed. No hike is scheduled with this program. Park vehicle entrance fee applies.

POND STUDY (6 - 12 yr. old) Sunday July 29, 1:30 - 3:00 p.m. Kids will use pond nets to collect and examine the various organ-isms that inhabit our pond. Meet at the pond by the park service entrance off of Church Road in Titusville. Advanced registration required.

PRIMITIVE FIRE-BUILDING SKILLS (all ages) Sunday August 5, 1:30 - 3:30 p.m. Learn how to build a fire with natural mate-rials. Build bow drills, hand drills and fire starting structures made of natural tinder and kindling. Try your hand at making a fire with these tools and learn the best materials and techniques related to this important outdoor skill. Park vehicle entrance fee applies.

MAP AND COMPASS SKILLS (pre-teens-adult) Sunday August 12, 1:30 - 3:30 p.m. This is an introduction to compass use and land navigation. Learn the basic history of the compass, from early use in land and sea navigation, to modern styles and purposes. Basic compass skills will be discussed including how to take a bearing. Park vehicle entrance fee applies

NIGHT HIKE (6 yrs. - adult) Saturday August 18 , 8:30 p.m. Explore the park for nature at night and have some good old-fash-ioned fun on this naturalist-guided hike and campfire. Advanced registration required. Bring a flashlight. Enter the park from the entrance on Bear Tavern Rd (Phillips Farm/ Group Camping Entrance) and follow the event signs. to the Nature Center. Advanced registration required

(events listings continued next page)

(Nature Center events continued)MONARCH MADNESS (all ages) Saturday August 25, 1:00 – 2:30 p.m. The monarch butterfly is a summertime classic here in Washington Crossing State Park. Come out for an introduction to the life cycle of this fascinating insect. Weʼll show you how to locate monarch eggs and larva and how to build a simple hatchery for raising the creatures. Advanced registration required after 7/24. Park vehicle entrance fee applies.

FAMILY NATURE WALK (all ages) Sunday August 26, 1:30 - 2:30 p.m. Join us for an informal naturalist-guided trail walk. Park vehicle entrance fee applies.

SOLAR OBSERVATION (all ages) Saturday September 1, 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. Observe naturalistic activity on the sun safely through a telescope equipped with a special filter. Observe sunspots, solar flares, prominences, and other solar phenomena, as they are avail-able. Learn how these storms can affect the earth as well as other interesting facts about our planet s̓ closest star. Personnel from the Amateur Astronomers Association of Princeton will conduct this activity. Clear skies required. Rain date is September 2, 1:30-3:00 pm. Park vehicle entrance fee applies.

DELAWARE RIVER ROMP (7 yrs. - adult) Sunday September 9, 1:30 - 3:30 p.m. Participants will explore the flora, fauna, geology and some of the history associated with the Delaware River as it passes by WCSP. Children and willing adults should come prepared to get wet as they forage the riverbank for a variety of river organisms. Meet in front of the Nelson House in Washington Grove. Advanced required after 8/7.

BACKYARD ASTRONOMY (preteens – adults) Friday September 14, 7:30 – 8:30 p.m. This class will acquaint participants with the celestial sphere and its coordinates, sky maps, constellations/asterisms, and the popular objects viewable from our night sky such as planets and moons, stars, star clusters, galaxies and nebulae, comets, and our Milky Way galaxy. Presented by. David Letcher and Gene Ramsey of the Amateur Astronomers ̓Assoc. of Princeton. The class will be followed by a session of night sky observa-tion at the adjacent AAAP observatory, weather permitting. This presentation will be the first installment of a four-session astronomy seminar to be continued on the following three consecutive Friday evenings (9/21, 9/28 and 10/5). AAAP will issue a certificate of at-tendance for anyone who participates in all four sessions. Enter the park from the entrance on Bear Tavern Rd (Phillips Farm/ Group Camping Entrance) and follow the event signs to the Nature Center. Advanced registration required after 8/1.

TREES OF THE PARK (adult) Sunday September 16, 1:30 - 3:30 p.m. Washington Crossing State Park is home to scores of spe-cies of native trees and shrubs as well as many non-natives that have become naturalized. Join the park naturalist on a walk and learn how to identify many of the most common species.

TELESCOPES FOR AMATEURS (pre-teen - adult) Friday September 21, 7:30 p.m. This session will trace the historical develop-ment of the telescope. We will also describe the types of telescopes and eyepieces used by amateurs as well as their important proper-ties such as aperture, focal ratio, magnification, and telescope mounts. The use of binoculars will be described. Mention will also be made as to which type of telescope is most useful for observing the sun, moon, and planets, as well as stars and star clusters, and deep-sky objects like nebulae and galaxies.. Instructor: David W. Letcher, Amateur Astronomers ̓Assoc. of Princeton. Advanced reg-istration required after 8/1. Enter the park at the Phillips Farm (group camping) entrance on Bear Tavern Rd. Meet at Nature Center.

BIKE HIKE (pre-teens - adult) Sunday September 23, 1:30 p.m. Take a guided bicycle ride up the Delaware & Raritan Canal Tow-path toward the Lambertville wing dam (approx. 13 mile round trip). Meet at the Nelson House parking lot. Bring your own bike and helmet. Advanced registration required after 8/21. Call the Nature Center at (609) 737-0609.

THE SOLAR SYSTEM (pre-teen – adult) Friday September 28, 7:30 p.m. This class will describe the objects found in the solar system. These include the sun, the planets and their moons, asteroids, comets, and meteoroids. Eclipses, both lunar and solar will be explained and described. Instructor: David W. Letcher, Amateur Astronomers ̓Assoc. of Princeton. Advanced registration required. Enter the park at the Phillips Farm (group camping) entrance on Bear Tavern Rd. Meet at Nature Center.

STARS, STAR CLUSTERS, AND GALAXIES (pre-teen - adult) Friday October 5, 7:30 p.m. This last session of the seminar will describe the magnitude, distances, and parallax of stars plus the types of star clusters we can see, both open and globular. The session will conclude with a description of the types and locations of galaxies and nebulae we can view from our backyard. Instructor: David W. Letcher, Amateur Astronomers ̓Assoc. of Princeton. Advanced registration required. Enter the park at the Phillips Farm (group camping) entrance on Bear Tavern Rd. Meet at Nature Center. Free.

(more WCSP events, next page)




VISITOR CENTER MUSEUM(609) 737-9303

READING OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE Wednesday July 4, 2:00 p.m. A reading of the Declaration of Inde-pendence will be followed by a musket firing demonstration. Park vehicle entrance fee applies.

MUSKET FIRING DEMONSTRATION Saturday July 7, 2:00 p.m. Join a park historian for an interpretive talk about some of the weapons used during the American Revolution and their use during the Battle of Trenton. Included will be a musket firing demonstra-tion. Park vehicle entrance fee applies.

HISTORICAL WALKING TOUR (8 yrs - adult) Saturday July 14, 1:00 p.m. Join a “Continental soldier” on a historical walk to learn the history of the famous Crossing and the march to Trenton. We meet at 1:00 p.m. at the Nelson House and then follow the Armyʼs footsteps along the Continental Lane to the Visitor Center Museum for a musket firing demonstration and discussion of the Battle of Trenton. Park vehicle entrance fee applies. Call for more information.

MUSKET FIRING DEMONSTRATION Each Saturday afternoon July 21 - September 29 (excluding August 11), 2:00 p.m. Join a park historian for an interpretive talk about some of the weapons used during the American Revolution and their use during the Battle of Trenton. Included will be a musket firing demonstration. Park vehicle entrance fee applies through Labor Day.


JOHNSON FERRY HOUSE(609) 737-2515

COLONIAL ICE CREAM FOOD WAYS DEMONSTRATION Wednesday, July 4,.11:00 a. m. - 4:00 p.m. Susan Plaisted will prepare ice cream of the 18th century. Taste samples are available. House and kitchen garden will be open. Park vehicle entrance fee applies. Donations are appreciated.

LATE SUMMER FOOD WAYS Sunday, August 26, 1:00 - 4:00 p.m.. Mercy Ingraham will prepare kitchen garden fare using 18th century recipes. Park vehicle entrance fee applies,.Donations are appreciated.

New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection


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