How about "none of the above"?

Horses, cows, and deer can rub up against hives,
using them as scratching posts, and knocking
the hives over.

The dead give-away would be small amounts of hair
caught in joints and under nails at the corners
of the hive bodies, but I'm surprised that no
herbivore spoor or tracks were found near the hives.
Herbivores trend to trample the grass.


I agree that it would be rare for a bear to
neatly tip over 6 hives, damaging nothing
in each case.  Most bear would at least leave
a few claw scratches on the pushed surfaces,
if not grab some sort of snack.


The unique thing about humans is that they tend
to be consistent, pushing over ALL the hives in
the yard, and pushing them in the same direction,
as they would push and then run away to the same
place a "safe distance away" each time.  They
also tend to only attempt such shenanigans on
nights that are moonlit.  Last weekend, the moon
was a mere sliver.  Unless the hives were clearly
visible from a road, humans would be a long shot
in my view.


Mike Palmer's bears in VT might have different tastes
than our bears in VA, mostly due to the better class of
garbage put out by all those rich city folk that moved to VT,
but one can often find the odd frame of honey left untouched
by a bear, while one will never find any untouched brood frames.

The focus on "Hunny" was nothing but the work of a good PR guy.
Winnie The Pooh would have been a far less sympathetic character
if he was revealed to like to eat wiggly, squishy, squirmy larvae.


           jim (Side effects may include loss of hair,
                loss of keys, asphyxia, dyslexia, anorexia,
                osteoporosis, anaphylaxis, acariasis...)

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