DEERFIELD — There’s a buzz at Historic Deerfield and it’s not from the people visiting the museum.
Visitors can explore the history of colonial Deerfield through insects in the “Six-Legged Legends” exhibit, which will provide a chance to learn about the museum’s collection through a lens many people haven’t explored.
“Humans and insects have occupied the world for a long time and often compete for the same resources, like the insects that get into our gardens,” said Historic Deerfield Museum Educator Faith Deering. “(The exhibit) is opening people’s minds. They just don’t know that and the whole role of insects now and in colonial times.”
Set up in the museum’s History Workshop, visitors learn about how bugs were used in Deerfield throughout the 1700s and how they relate to Historic Deerfield’s collection. Deering, who has a background in entomology, will guide folks through the life cycle and harvest practices of silkworms and how silk found its way to colonial Deerfield from Europe and China. Honeybees are the second pillar of the exhibit, with their roles as pollinators, honey producers and wax makers emphasized.
“If you unwind a cocoon, you get one single mile of thread or filament,” Deering said, holding a silkworm’s cocoon. “Because (the silkworms are) so important to the collection, we wanted to highlight them.”
Although silkworm breeding and silk production operations didn’t find their way to the Pioneer Valley until the 1800s, silk was an important commodity imported into Deerfield in the colonial era, with most of it coming from China, according to Deering.
“They don’t think about New England, they think about China,” Deering said about the presence of silk.
Historic Deerfield’s collection contains historical silk garments like women’s gowns and men’s banyans. The museum also has articles of clothing and sample designs featuring silk embroidery.
“Most of the silk in our collection was ordered,” Deering explained. “It was for the wealthy people.”
As for the honeybees, which were also imported to Deerfield, colonists used their wax to create candles to light their homes. Honey was also the “main sweetener” of food because the triangular transatlantic slave trade of the era did not bring sugar to New England.
“They know they needed wax and they needed honey,” Deering said.
The “Six-Legged Legends” exhibit features a hands-on candle-making activity as well as honey tastings courtesy of Warm Colors Apiary. Deering highlighted there are four varieties of honey with different flavors and colors based on bees’ “floral constancy,” which is a phenomenon where bees will exclusively pollinate one type of flower and the nectar in those flowers influences the honey produced.
“Six-Legged Legends” will be on display through Aug. 28. Admission to the exhibit and activities is included in Historic Deerfield’s general admission fees.
Deering said, “What I want people to walk away with is, ‘Oh, I learned something.’”
Chris Larabee can be reached at clarabee@recorder.com or 413-930-4081.