Nature is Full of Hexagons

By Coggin Heeringa, Interpretive Naturalist, Crossroads at Big Creek, Inc.

Looking at the array of programs at Crossroads this week, we begin to see patterns…repeating patterns… of hexagons. If we are “looking,” we are seeing  thanks to hexagons because the photoreceptors (light-catching cones in the back of our eyeballs) form closely packed hexagon-shaped patterns.

And this week, we will be seeing hexagons everywhere, from the honeycombs displayed during the annual Door County Beekeepers Community Honey Harvest to the shells of the turtles that sun themselves along the edge of Crossroads’ Cove Estuary.

On Thursday evening, August 22 at 5:30 our “Resources for Landowners Lecture Series,” will feature Allison Willman who will describe the Wisconsin DNR wetlands programs and the resources they offer landowners.

Knowing that many of our local wetlands are recharged by melting snow and ice, we note that snowflakes and ice crystals form because their water molecules (almost always) arrange themselves in lattices of hexagons.

A honeycomb is the iconic example of repeating hexagons. The Door County Beekeepers will hold their annual Community Honey Harvest on Saturday, August 24 from 9:00 to noon to celebrate the honey and wax  which comes from a honeycomb.

Various educational stations  in and outside the Collins Learning Center will interest  participants of all ages. Visitors will get a close view of honeybees through the glass window of an observation hive and will have the opportunity to taste and compare honey sample and try honey lemonade and mead.

Guests also will have the opportunity to roll wax candles. A demonstration of dipping hot wax candles will take place inside the building.

In the children’s tent, kids can pet a live drone (male) honeybee and explore beekeeper tools and hive boxes, among other activities.

Honey extraction, the central process of beekeeping, involves removing honey from the hexagon-shaped cells of honeycomb. Flow-hive extractions will be done at the Crossroads Apiary at an active hive from 9:30 to 10:00, and 10:30 to 11:00. Conventional Langstroth extractions will be done indoors, away from the bees from 10:00-10:30, and 11:00 to 11:30.

Representatives from Crossroads, Wild Ones-Door Peninsula, the Door County Seed Library and the Door County Master Gardeners Association will be in the lecture hall, offering demonstrations and videos about pollination and pollinators. They will distribute free native wildflower seeds.

That afternoon at 2:00, Saturday Science, our weekly family program, will continue the hexagon theme with a video and activities featuring hexagons ranging from ancient coral fossils to the elegant hexagon-shaped, gold-plated mirror segments of the James Webb Telescope.

Monarch Tagging is a traditional Crossroads/Wild Ones collaboration, so on Sunday afternoon at 2:00, guest Naturalist Karen Newbern will offer a fascinating program on the life cycle of monarch butterflies. She will describe the amazing migration these orange and black butterflies will make to a forest grove in Mexico where they will overwinter.

Then, participants, armed with nets, will venture out into the meadows at Crossroads to catch, tag and release the monarchs, assuming weather conditions and monarch migration patterns cooperate. Perhaps (this has happened in the past) a butterfly tagged at Crossroads will be retrieved in Mexico.

For decades, researchers have been fascinated by the evidence that butterflies born this summer are able to find their way to the very grove of conifers in which their great-great-great-grandparents and countless generations roosted to overwinter.

Monarch migration turn out to be quite complicated and still under investigation, but an article in the National Library of Medicine explains, “Recent studies of the iconic fall migration of monarch butterflies have illuminated the mechanisms behind the navigation south, using a time-compensated sun compass. Skylight cues, such as the sun itself and polarized light, are processed through both eyes and likely integrated in the brain’s central complex, the presumed site of the sun compass.”

And the relatively enormous compound eyes of monarch butterflies consist of thousands of hexagon-shaped ommatidia, which sense light and movement.

Nature is full of hexagons and Crossroads at Big Creek  is full of nature. Our trails are open all day every day, free of charge, thanks to the generosity of our donors.