Katherine Day Part 8

From Katherine Day's sketch book.

Part 8

At Home With Katherine Day - Artist, Writer, Homesteader

     "In pioneer days on the isolated farms in winter, the women of the household chiefly used cut-up, worn-out garments, and even made use of old potato sacks, for the base of hooked rugs," wrote artist / crafter, Katherine Day, in her unpublished manuscript on the "how-to's of rug hooking." "There is a lady I know who works beautifully in rags, dyeing them and blending the colours artistically. But she is the only one I know who takes such trouble. She uses only discarded woven woollen underwear and other soft woollen material, and it must take her ages to collect enough from her friends. She cuts them up into fine strips lengthwise, not crosswise, and works with these short lengths, bringing the ends up to the right side, and clipping them even with the rest of the work that goes on. She never has made a rug larger than three feet by six, and what she does is truly lovely. But it is laborious."
     Even the most mature and pastel textured wildflowers, at roadside this morning, seem as if new spring growth in the intense sunglow of autumn. Their presence is a bright cheerful resolve of the season, resigned to the fate to be brought soon by heavy frost, and that change which brings leaves to the ground, and yellows the still vibrant field grasses, that agitate in rhythmic, gentle waves, in the cool breeze etching down over the countryside hills, valleys and farm fields of Oro-Medonte. It is the scene that Canadian Artist, Katherine Day looked out upon from her cottage at Hawthornes, and later, Pax Cottage, the charming dwelling she built a short distance down the road. It is easy to appreciate why she found this area of Simcoe County so engaging to her creative ambitions. It takes only a few minutes, pausing here on a hillside, overlooking the valley, to understand just how storied it is, and why the change of seasons impacted her art work so profoundly, and made working around her property so pleasant and rewarding.
     We now resume the biography of Katherine Day, from the 1940's handwritten journal, that is currently in our possession, along with numerous of her sketch books. It is the summer of 1941, and in this portion of the journal, she is writing about her relationship with bees. There is also an earlier story included, that is dated 1936, under the heading "A House in the Country," which may have been a preliminary foray into writing a book about life and times of a modern day homesteader. First, we will look at her larger journal penned in the early 1940's.
     In Katherine Day's words, "The Queen Bee has come. I had a hive prepared for her, and some brood on the frame, with a coating of honey. But the bees charged their way out of the hive entrance before the Queen arrived, and disclosed the hive to their neighbors. Luckily this happened just as the Queen arrived by the rural mail delivery. 'I've got your bee for you,'said the postman's wife, who was taking the route for him that day. She was pleased and interested (in the bee delivery).
     "Oh good,' I said, and held the tiny package to my ear. There was no sound. No flutter of wings. No buzzing. Inside the house, I removed the card tied around it, then with a nail file, I tore off the paper enclosing the cage, bit by bit. I could see bees stirring. They were alive. I took it to the side door and peeled anxiously through the double circle which made up their travelling headquarters in that box. There was the Queen, slender and graceful, darting here and there among her servants, and making a thin buzzing sound. She was alive and very active, and the candy food supplied for them was still in place.
     "Over one end was a very small patch of paper with these words. 'Do not remove. See instructions.' Of course, there were no instructions attached, but it was easy to see that this covered the direct entrance to the candy, which in turn led to the cage of the bees. The theory is that they eat the candy and thus make a passage through to the exit, and go on to freedom. I have not found that this is always true. When the cage is introduced to the hive, the bees will usually find the Queen through the wire. They will neglect to nibble at the candy and the Queen might be imprisoned indefinitely. After two days of uninterrupted seclusion the hive should be carefully spread to examine the little cage, and the Queen is liberated by cutting the wire door above her. This I have always found necessary to do. The two days of seclusion give the Queen some measure of protection, and give the bees time to get acquainted with the new Queen.
     "Last night I shut in the 'robbers' along with the new Queen. There was an excited buzzing for some time, and I looked cautiously to see whether they were clustering too thickly around the Queen and smothering her, but they were not. A few bees were examining the cage, the others were on the honey comb. This morning there are no bees to be seen. I had removed the hive to a place near the house where I could keep a look-out for more robbers, and as night was coming-on, it was easy to get rid of those still moving about. A bunch of these acted as snitches to discourage the war before it could occur. I removed the hive out of the way. This morning there is a contented hum in the little hive, and by the time they chew their way out through the grass stuffed into the entrance, I hope that all will be well. The weather is fairly dry and there is a wonderful honey flow.
     "July 26, 1941 - Wasps are continually flying into the honey, kept in the house, and violating it. One of these landed heavily and ended up in the salt cellar by clear misadventure. He (the wasp) may have judged it as a nice exclusive sort of sugar done up in a small container, and very precious, but not for long. I heard a furious banging on a miniature scale, and by that time his two hind sets of legs were crystalline with honey; very pretty and decorative, as though he had wrapped himself up in Christmas decorations. He was trailing low, and his indignant tail was becoming desecrated. Honey and salt made a curious mixture on the unfortunate intruder. I picked him up in the salt spoon and heaved him high into the air. It was, by this point, a very mad wasp. But the good news is, that it survived and flew again."
     Dated June 14th, 1936, Katherine Day noted the following in her chapter entitled "A Home in the Country," with the sub-heading, "The Keeping of Bees." In the typewritten account, she reports that, "Such a day as this should not go unrecorded. The lovely soft air is filled with dandelion feathers. They fly in clouds across the branches of pine trees, through the apple-trees, and drop softly on the Buttercups and clover.
     "The bees, recently purchased, are in their white hive under the apple tree. When they were delivered to me some weeks ago, I borrowed a book on bees 'The ABC & XYZ of Bees,' a large book I needed for upgrading as a bee-keeper. It does not begin 'Once there was a little bee called Alice, who had two sisters, Beatrice and Charlotte.' And then go on with the intimate life story of those hard working sisters. Far from that sort of book, it begins with 'Absconding Swarms,' and ends with 'Zinc'. A library itself.
     "Now when the bees started loitering about on the front doorstep, in the warm afternoons, doing no work, and trying new dance steps, I took some time to hunt for the cause. At first it seemed I had found their case under 'Robbers,' in the book, a situation, by the way, I had never heard of before. Robbers, too lazy to gather their own honey, creep in on busy hives that have suffered a change of residence, and nip off with the honey so cleverly, that in twelve hours your bees may be starving. The thing to do was to watch for guilty conduct on the part of these robber bees, loitering on the doorsteps, licking their paws in an embarrassed way, sidling in the entrance unobtrusively. Once you were sure of their presence, the entrance had to be closed up to a very small area, so that it might be the more easily guarded. I did so, not because I was sure of the presence of robber bees, but because I was not. I put a lath across the entrances leaving them about an inch to come in and out, and at first they were furious. They held such a buzz of discussions on their front step that I became intimidated, and removed the lath. Then I decided that they were gathering to swarm.
     "Extra bee supplies had been ordered for this emergency, but only very recently, and June is a busy season for the supply house, and orders are often delayed. Day after day I had telephoned the Express Company as to their arrival, until I had finally received the sympathy of the entire staff, and they telephoned me as soon as they finally did arrive. Luck stayed with me, and the bees had not yet swarmed, although they kept up this loitering on the front steps (of the hives) regularly every afternoon.
     "I had sent for two 'supers', as the frame work of the hive is called, and for frames, to be outfitted with a wax foundation comb, to go into a second hive which I already had. This would outfit two complete hives, of two storys each. The bees like to keep the lower story for their brood chamber, and the necessary food for the young brood, and when that is filled they will fill the upper story with honey. I have learned, after two winters' experience, that there is not sufficient honey stored in the lower chamber to weather a winter for a strong and hungry hive. They need the upper chamber too, or a good part of it. As I do not extract, but take off only comb-honey made in prepared sections, I have found that the bees will gather clover and basswood honey, and a few other sorts in the small comb sections, say, to about August first, and then should be given empty honeycomb frames to fill for their own winter needs. If you take away too much of the late summer honey, they will keep gathering what they can find in the late autumn, and that will be from rotting fruit and will bring sickness into the hive. The late summer honey is made mainly from goldenrod and buckwheat, which are not favourites for the table here in Ontario. The flavour is a little strong, but for cooking the dark honey is better than the light. The reason I have not extracted is simply that the equipment is rather elaborate, the process is very sticky and a bit laborious, and any way, I have only two hives of bees. Besides, I like comb-honey, and I never get tired of it. It is supposed to be good for hay-fever, if you have that dreadful malady. It takes the bees longer to make it than to make honey only, for they have to build the cells as well; consequently you get less.
     "But about leaving the bees the extra supper of honey for themselves, that I am convinced, is a kind thing to do for them. The two hives that I wintered last year have proved it. Once I left more than I thought they needed, and the bees have come roaring out in the spring, full of energy and good humour. The other, which was a nine frame hive, (small, that is, as most of them are ten frame) came out feeble, horrifying me by the number of dead bees I found. It had only the amount of honey that was prescribed by the text. This book, by the way, was written in the United States, where the climate (in the southern states) is milder than Simcoe County in Ontario."
     There are a few bees visible today, darting and buzzing over the fields of dry grasses, silken wings giving a spark to the vista of wide open spaces, in a deep blue sky, here in the bosom of Oro-Medonte, where Katherine Day had found her Eden. As a voyeur today, I can easily see and feel why it pleased her creative enterprises, whether painting landscapes, making her prints, jotting copious notes about colourations for her latest illustrations, or just tending to the needs of the many creatures that also knew Hawthorne's as their country home.
     Please join us tomorrow, when we resume the biography of Katherine Day, with more about bee keeping at Hawthornes.