I know summer is coming to a close when the harvest begins - Seneca (formerly Green Giant) was out harvesting the sweet corn field that surrounded my farm this last week. The bees were happy to see it go, at least two different times they sprayed the field with a helicopter. While they did luckily spray on non-windy days and earlier in the morning some of them were likely exposed to whatever pesticide they used. What this will do to them is anyone's guess, but it safe to say it probably isn't helpful for them.
Regardless it's fun to watch them chew up a field of sweet corn - it's amazing how quickly it disappears. Especially when you think about how much corn is involved. The average sweet corn field usually will yield about 8-10 tons per acre. After it's husked and cut there is about 45-50% of that weight left of actual sweet corn. So taking this particular field - 160 acres X 8 tons X 45% = 576 tons of edible sweet corn - over 1 million pounds of sweet corn. This field was picked and canned in under 24 hours, so you get the drift of how efficient they are.
What I didn't realize until the next morning however was that they were a little too efficient - they must have been going by my field of popcorn real early in the AM and for some reason that I still have yet to decipher they picked about half of one variety of my popcorn! I was pretty pissed off at first - even though my popcorn is just about the same height as the sweet corn, it is much different. My field was separated by a line of weeds and is also planted with different row spacing so the driver of the combine who did this must have been sleeping. After I cooled off (30 minutes or so) I made a few phone calls and within an hour I had a supervisor over to my house talking about what had happened. He said they would make things right and are going to send a check for my estimate of the loss. While I was impressed how quickly they responded I still am a bit bummed out since they destroyed half of my favorite variety. I guess this way I won't have to work so hard this fall.
One reason that makes me forget about stupid things that happen like big companies wrecking my fields or spraying my bees with chemicals is my smiling little girl. She has been doing very well and after all excitement she caused back in April things are getting more normal - which is nice.
