Randy;

I enjoyed your collective wisdom on bear fences.  Our bear population is
expanding in NC and I have fed my fair share of bears with whole hives.
The clever bears carry a whole hive out of the yard before destroying it to
lessen the attacks from neighboring hives.  It always amazes me how strong
the average bear is after seeing them rip the sides out of a brood
chamber.  I have bees in the NC mountains at a vacation house and there are
many bears in the neighborhood.  My neighbor suggested I put my bees on the
roof of an old tobacco barn on my property to avoid bears, skunks, and 'two
'legged' predators.  I put them up there 4 years ago after reinforcing the
frame of the barn and now have 36 hives on the roof as seen in the linked
photo below.  An added benefit is when I have guests the bees fly up from
the hives and seldom fly through the yard or the garden and no one has been
stung.  As my hive numbers have grown I had to devise a way to get honey
off the roof.  I used to carry loaded supers down 2 sets of stairs, but
after stumbling with a loaded super 2 years ago realized that was not too
smart.  I built a 32 foot ramp (with removable bottom when not in use to
avoid it being used as an access ramp by bears) and now slide supers up and
down on a furniture dolly.  It works like a charm.

I was using a rope and belayer to let the supers down the ramp but had a
load of 4 supers get away from me this spring with a big crash at the
bottom.  I am about to install a Harbor Freight winch to slowing lower and
raise the dolly to avoid sudden descents in the future.

Bill Lord
beekeepingconsultingfordevelopment.com
Louisburg (and Buladean - in the NC mnts) NC

http://s1056.photobucket.com/user/wglord/media/IMG_4287_zps7620f891-1.jpg
.html

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