What you describe is standard bear behavior.  Night one, knock hives over, retreat when bees get too testy.


Next night, drag a few frames out of toppled hives, retreat when bees start to defend frames.


Later drag frames farther away.


Keep doing this until the colonies are torn apart to the point that the bees are demoralized, are less aggressive, or drift off.


Few days and the bear has free run of the ruined colonies.  No or few bees left on exposed frames.


It's typically a staged attack - unlike skunks, bears don't like getting stung.


As per electric fences, in our dry climate, we have best luck putting a metal screen/grid on the ground, surrounding hives with vertical metal ranch panels, stand electric wires off of the ranch panel on insulators facing outrward.  Bear has to try to crawl over the ranch panel, is standing on a ground that is connected to metal grounding stakes, when the bear touches front paws to ranch panel and belly against hot wires.   If one wants to speed up the process, hang bacon on the hot wires.  Nothing like a jolt to the tongue.





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