Theme Music Hi there.

And welcome back to New Hampshire Crossroads.

My name is Paul Mangion, and I'll be your host this week and every week throughout the year.

You know, there comes a time in your life when there's a sudden awareness of just how much water you've seen pass under the bridge.

Now, I'm not talking about the big technological advances of the past 20 years.

Spaceflights, organ transplants and home computers are now part of everyday reality, and they're rather taken for granted.

No, it's the little personal things that drive the point home.

I was shopping in the supermarket the other day when I noticed that the background music seemed quite familiar.

I thought for a moment, and then I remembered it as an early Bob Dylan song.

Now this piece of music was written in anger, sung in protest, and was accepted as one of the anthems of my generation.

And here I was, humming along while trying to decide whether to buy scented or unscented cat litter.

Well, the music and the times change.

People too.

And so do television shows.

We've made a few changes on Crossroads, and we hope you like them.

Some you've noticed already, and some will be surprises as the season progresses.

Our first story tonight is about the man who made the weathervane you’ll see each week as part of our set.

His name is Don Felix and he lives in Seabrook Beach.

Don's weathervanes are handmade, one of a kind works of art that reflect his deep love of the outdoors and tradition.

And then we're off to the White Island Lighthouse at the Isles of Shoals.

And later you learn all about bees from our own amateur beekeeper, Chip Neil.

So settle back, relax, and we'll go meet Don Felix.

But remember, this is the fall, this is New England, and this is New Hampshire Crossroads.

Music Weathervanes have long been part of New England scenery, but weathervanes like the ones shown here go far beyond just telling you which way the wind is blowing.

On display at the Concord store of the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen, they've been designed and hand-built by coppersmith Don Felix.

I think the most enjoy, enjoyable thing about my work is being able to go outside and study the figures or the boats or whatever I'm making firsthand, rather than just look at a book and take it out of a book.

If you want the piece to look natural, you've got to study a natural piece to begin with.

We visited Don Felix's studio to check on our weathervane, view some of his creations, and to see how he works.

Detail is very important in all the work I do.

Whether it's large or small, every little thing is important to make the piece a complete piece and to give it the character and the life that it needs to make it more than just a hammered-out weathervane to make it an individual piece, a collectible piece, and a piece that I, myself and everybody else can truly appreciate.

(hammering sounds) One of the favorite items that I make is the frog.

And the frog, after the pattern has been made, the first thing that you have to do is cut out all the pieces.

And finally I'm down to my last piece, which is a leg.

First thing I do is scratch a line all the way around each piece, which you've got to be very careful not to move the pattern.

Because you want every piece to be as close to the other piece as possible, which on some things is easier than others.

(Silence) Once you've got it all scratched out, you take your snips.

And you cut it off the roll first of all.

From there, I cut off most of the excess, especially around the fingers.

As you can see, it's a fairly long process to cut out a complete frog, seeing how there’s 27 pieces in each frog.

This is the forearm.

And this goes with all the rest of the pieces.

You've got the sides and the both sides and the back all the way down to the webbed feet and the marble eye.

Music When I was commissioned to do the Channel 11 Crossroads weathervane for their set, the first thing that I was to do was to get in touch with Tracy Kane and find out exactly what they wanted and what the weathervane was to be used for.

I like to have a close relationship with the people that I'm working with, so that I can put out what they want, not just what I want.

I want them to be pleased with it, and I want it to be their weathervane as much as my weathervane.

Once all the problems are worked out, we have the design so that we're both satisfied with it and the pattern is drawn to scale.

My next step is to get into the shop here and get working on it.

What I did is I made an actual pattern that I'm going to go right off of, and I've cut some pieces of tubing and I've laid them out and I'm going to use this pattern.

This is a scale of the exact weather vane.

And once everything is laid out, I begin tacking the various parts together.

When you're doing something, a weathervane of this nature, something that's going to be used indoors and it's going to be seen by a lot of people, you've got to take more time.

And the most important thing about this weathervane is the face of the Old Man of the Mountain.

We wanted all the lines to be very distinct, and we didn't want any question whether or not that was the Old Man or not.

First, I tack it into place with a soldering iron, and then from there it's a little bit quicker and it's a lot neater to use a torch.

Using the torch, you try to keep the solder in a consistency, like toothpaste, because if the solder gets too hot, you'll find the whole thing will fall apart and you'll be back where you started from.

It takes a long time to learn how to use the torch well, to really learn how to flow the solder.

When you're doing larger projects like this bull, you find the torch more useful for running longer seams because you've got to maintain your heat.

Also, there are places like in between the feet and the chest where you just can't get a soldering iron into, so you can see all the soldering involved.

And when it's done, you end up with a total piece and you don't really look at the solder.

You just look at the complete piece.

The finish of a weather vane is very important.

This is a copper tone finish, and you can see the different blues and purples and browns.

And it gives it a beautiful effect.

Another thing I would like to mention is that my weathervanes are made completely by hand.

I do not use cast iron molds like most of the larger companies do.

Each piece I make is individualized.

There are no two weathervanes that I make that are alike, and this is one of the things that I pride myself on.

There are a lot of other things to weathervanes and just birds and ships and stuff.

I enjoyed making the weathervane of the girls flying the kite because it shows, it shows the tension of the girls actually holding that big kite down.

And the kite is so big compared to the girls that it would take three of them and three people working together to hold that kite right to the ground.

That cog railway weathervane I made about seven years ago.

I made that for my sister's son.

What inspired me to make that, believe it or not, was the driftwood that it was mounted on.

And to me, it looked like Mount Washington.

Music Once the weathervane is complete, I, the next step was to make the letters for the weathervane, which I have done.

And from here it's just the idea of putting it all on and, and really visually looking at the thing and seeing if you did a good job or not.

But I think Channel 11 Crossroads is going to be very happy with this weathervane.

And the finishing touch, of course, is the Old Man himself.

There you have it.

Well, Don was right!

We are very happy with our new Crossroads weathervane!

Music (Sound of water flowing) Music Some nine miles southeast of the mouth of Portsmouth Harbor, grouped together in the Atlantic Ocean, are nine rocky islands and a number of ledges known to European fishermen since the early 1600s.

They are called the Isles of Shoals.

The boundary line between Maine and New Hampshire passes through this archipelago, so the five islands lie in Maine and four in New Hampshire.

The southernmost New Hampshire isle is White Island, where, since 1821, a lighthouse has been maintained for the safety and convenience of mariners.

Called Isles of Shoals’ Light, the lighthouse is an independent station reporting directly to the First Coast Guard District in Portland.

It is not, as many people think, an outpost of the Portsmouth Coast Guard station, but because the Portsmouth Coast Guard station is nearby, that is where the mail and supplies come from.

And that's where we went to hitch a ride to New Hampshire's only island lighthouse.

(No dialogue) Because rocks and ledges prevent any sizable boat from approaching closely, the Coast Guardsmen on the island must launch a peapod to pick up supplies and visitors.

On a windy day like this one, it can be quite a trip.

Music Well, you picked an awful day!

(laugs) (No dialogue) Meanwhile, the 41 footer waits offshore to discharge more cargo.

(Radio sounds) Okay.

(No dialogue) The weekly visit by the patrol boat is a welcome human contact on an island whose only regular link with the mainland is by radio.

Portsmouth Harbor Coast Guard Light Station Isle of Shoals, two three with the weather, over.

Shoals, Portsmouth send your weather, over.

Portsmouth Shoals cloudy, one zero.

North northwest 2002.

He's filling in the chart just like we have: sky condition visibility, wind direction and speed., what the seas are doing, and air temperature and barometric pressure.

All the lighthouses up and down the coast do this every three hours.

And, so they get a pretty, pretty good idea of what's happening as far as the weather goes.

The station contains an office for the preparation of necessary reports and paperwork, but the station building is also a home to those men stationed there, and it has a comfortable living room, which looks like its counterpart in any suburban house ashore.

There's a recreation room with bumper pool, books and games, and other diversions to help fill the long hours.

And of course, the kitchen where Machinery Technician Joel Wood does a fair amount of baking.

(No dialogue) I like to cook a lot.

I do a lot of baking, and I share it with all the other guys.

They like to eat, I like to eat.

So, I guess you could say I'm a good cook.

Everybody enjoys it.

A lot of cakes, cookies, bread, cinnamon rolls.

And then your normal food, that's sort of luxuries out here.

We usually don't eat that.

Well.

Not eating well is a longstanding tradition on White Island.

Over 100 years ago, the government lighthouse inspector would visit several times each year, bringing oil for the light and one barrel of pork for the keeper.

This view of the station dates from about 1870, 30 years after the light was kept by Thomas Leighton, Leighton's daughter Celia, later Celia Thaxter, spent her girlhood on White Island, and there she formed the images and impressions, which later made her one of New England's most celebrated Victorian poets.

In one of her poems, she describes the colored lights of the 1840s lighthouse: I lit the lamps in the lighthouse tower for the sun dropped down and the day was dead.

They shone like a glorious clustered flower, ten golden and five red.

After seven years of light keeping, the Leightons moved from White Island to nearby Hog Island, which they renamed Appledore, and there they built a grand summer hotel called Appledore House.

The warm and spontaneous personality of Celia, the former lighthouse keeper’s daughter, and novelties like a protected bathing pool on a wild island, attracted many painters, writers and musicians to the Isles of Shoals.

When Harper's Magazine featured the Isles of Shoals in its issue of October 1874, the writer was very impressed with White Island's light tower, which had been rebuilt just a few years before.

The civilian station of last century was enlarged and supplemented with Coast Guard personnel early in the 1900s.

About 1930, the last civilian left, the large residence was removed, and now only Coast Guardsmen make the long trip to the top of the light.

(No dialogue) Here’s the lenses, they’re thousand-watt light bulbs.

One’s always on, one’s active standby in case one blows, the other one flips in automatically.

The light can be seen for 21 miles.

The complete unit of lamp and housing is called a lens, and Isles of Shoals Light is a duplex lens because there are two lighting units.

A boat going by will see a four second flash every 15 seconds.

I also Shoals Light stands just over 100ft above the water at low tide.

The gulls can be envied for their freedom to come and go from the island as they please.

The Coast Guardsmen have no such freedom.

Each man must spend two weeks at Isles of Shoals Light before he has earned one week off the island.

Two on, one off, two on, one off.

It calls for a certain kind of temperament, according to Jack Merrill, the officer in charge of the Light.

It's usually somebody that likes a quiet life and can live with, with, you know, without a lot of people around and that likes this type of isolation.

Music Music Of course, bees were around millions of years before man.

But it didn't take man long once he got here to realize that honey was delightful stuff.

As a matter of fact, the earliest record of human beekeeping, collecting honey from a hive, is in 15,000 BC.

And the method of collecting honey was equally primitive, more than likely learned from watching bears simply reach into a wild hive like this one and scoop the honeycomb out.

A few times with this method probably led to some serious experimentation with new, less painful methods.

Historic records indicate that beekeeping in domesticated hives was practiced in Egypt as early as 3000 BC.

Modern hives consist of wooden boxes known as supers, filled with removable frames.

Dover beekeeper Bob Paige agreed to give us a tour of one of his hives.

When opening a hive, you calm the bees, make it easier to handle.

We puff a little smoke in the entrance.

A little more on the inner cover and wait for a few seconds for it to take effect.

And then we can take the covers off.

Outer cover first.

We lift the inner cover, a little more smoke set the inner cover aside, and then we can proceed from there.

Now this is a hive which contains bees from a swarm that came this spring, probably in late June.

We'll talk about swarms a little later, but for now it means that this is a new hive.

So one of the first things the bees must do is build comb on the new wax foundation in the frames which Bob has given them.

The shape of the cell is imprinted on both sides of the flat wax sheet, so the bees will build up the cells on both sides, a process called drawing out the comb.

Once this is done, the bees can begin storing pollen and honey in the cells, as well as using the cells to raise their young.

Now the next body down will be a fruit chamber for the bees during the wintertime.

Now we can see what's inside here.

In the summer, a healthy hive will have anywhere from 50 to 80,000 bees inside, all engaged in gathering pollen to feed the young or the brood and collecting nectar, which is processed into honey to feed the adult bee.

And you and I, if all goes well.

Here is next t the outside frame is practically filled.

You see, the bees are still working.

in there and here where there’s new nectar.

like you may be able to see it glisten in the sun.

This side isn't filled as well.

You can see they're beginning to fill it.

And that that's filled and cured has been capped.

with wax out here.

This white material is all nice white wax.

Now, while the female worker bees are out gathering pollen and nectar and maintaining the hive, the queen is busy depositing eggs into a thousand or more of these cells each day.

The eggs turn into larvae after three days, and six days later they turn into pupa.

The cell is then sealed and the adult bee emerges 12 days later.

A total of 21 days to make a worker bee, which has an average life of six weeks in the summer and will collect approximately 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey.

There’s one with some sealed brood.

This is sealed brood where the cappings are on top and around the edges.

You can see the larvae curled up in the bottom of the cells.

Now you get to the real question: how do you get the honey out of your hive and onto your table?

Well, after you have convinced the bees to let you have a full capped frame of honey, then the most common method is extracting, explained here by Bob Paige.

In this case, we wanted honey, we would take a large knife and take these cappings off the entire, first one side., then we turn it over, take the cappings off the other side, which will expose the honey in the cells.

Then we place the frame in a machine called the extractor, which is really a low speed centrifuge, which then is turned and whirls the honey out.

When the honey is extracted, then the frame is put right back in the hive, all of the cells still drawn out to the point where the cappings were cut off and drained of honey, and then it's ready for bees to fill up again.

I've been an amateur beekeeper myself for a few years.

Now, I'm going to wrap this story up with the answers to those questions most often asked me once people find out I'm a beekeeper.

Question number one, where do you get the bees to put into your new hive?

Well, I got mine from Florida.

They were mailed to me in a 3 pound package along with the queen.

Cost about $30.

Another way to get bees is to collect a swarm, normally found in late May and early June.

Swarms are the honey bees’ way of establishing new hives.

What do bees do in the winter?

Well, they're cold blooded, so they stay right in the hive and bunch up in a ball, vibrating their wings for heat and ventilation.

And the bees in this ball or cluster get food from the winter honey stores and pass it to each other.

Do you ever get stung?

Yes, I do, but not that often.

The sting always hurts, but the swelling and itching becomes less severe as you develop an immunity.

How much honey do you get?

Well, the average hive yield is around 50 pounds, and this year was my best year and I got 47 pounds from my active hive.

But there is another product of a beehive which is much more important, and that's pollination.

About one third of our diet is dependent upon insect-pollinated plants.

If you're interested in becoming a beekeeper, I'd suggest contacting your area beekeepers’ association.

But if you're just interested, talk to a local beekeeper.

We're all sweet on the subject.

And besides, we know all the buzzwords.

I have a friend in Durham who once thought that having a hive or two in the backyard would be just the greatest thing.

Gert had visions of fresh honeycomb to chew and beeswax candles to burn, not to mention an improved pollination of her garden.

So she sent away for the hive, the tools, and the bees.

One day, after several weeks of breathless anticipation, there was a call from the postmaster in town.

It seemed that the package had broken open, and there were thousands and thousands of confused and angry bees buzzing around the building.

And would she care to come down and pick up her delivery?

The postmaster had faced rain, sleet, snow, even the gloom of night, but the bees had him at a loss.

Well, luckily, the bees swarmed on a tree outside the building and they soon departed for parts unknown.

And that temporarily put an end to Gert’s beekeeping.

Well, from the keeper of the tradition to the keeper of the light, to the keeper of the bees, that's New Hampshire Crossroads for this time.

Next week, we'll take a look at the blessing of the Portsmouth fishing fleet.

You'll meet a man who restores Concord stagecoaches, and we'll check out all the glamor of the Volvo Tennis Tournament in North Conway.

So for all of us here at New Hampshire Crossroads, thanks for watching the show.

I'm Paul Mangion, and we'll see you next week.

Theme Music