At 10:08 PM 6/6/96 -0500, you wrote:
>
>Has anyone had any luck making a platform to protect hives from bears?
>
I must confess that I do not know too much about using 'platforms'
to prevent bear attacks, but since I do have first hand experience
with black bears and since I have tried to read anything I find
about dealing with the problem, I feel that I must comment.
My own experience as well as other's exp that I have read about
indicates that once the bruin has sampled a particular bee yard
there is precious little that you can do to prevent return
engagements, short of hunting the animal down and killing it (not
particularly easy since they are primarily nocturnal). Therefore
prevention is the key.
Much has been written about electric fences, and I don't plan on
recapping all of that. There are many excellent products on the
fencing market that will deter a bear who just *happens* onto an
apiary. The best possible fencing option for the hobbyist who has
his hives in the backyard, reasonably close to 120V is to buy an AC
livestock fencer (the ole weed burner). These products produce a great
"bang for the buck" and provide a pulsing charge that will continue to
zap for as long as there is contact with it.
For the large numbers of bee keeps that have hives remotely located
there are battery powered or solar powered electric fence units. There
is much who-hah about how many volts these units produce to which I
reply "so what?". The property that you're going after here is current
flow. I confess that I don't know what the amperage is of these DC units
(or the AC ones either), but I do know that it can't be a large amount.
The old saying is voltage will get your attention, but its the current
that kills you. Electro Static Discharge (static electricity)
is generated in 10's of thousand's of volts (a typical shock from the
carpet in your house with an excellent generator like wool socks will
generate 8000-10000 volts charge), but the current flow is very small
so you don't die you just yell DAMN!!!! Much the same as if you came in
contact with an electric fence. But I digress.
The bad news about charged DC fences is that once they have discharged
there is a time factor to consider before the fence is ready to zap
again. Batteries are, after all great big honkin capacitors, and
capacitors
can hold a tremendous charge, but once its gone, time is required to
build
the charge back to the previous level. Bears are much faster than this
time factor.
As I mentioned above, none of these measures will stop a bear who knows
what a treat is held in those hives and is hungry and/or determined
enough to get to them.
Another measure that has been tried is live-trapping and transporting
out of the area. This is extremely costly, is usually done by the
state fish and game and is difficult to coordinate. And it doesn't
always work. The bear's grazing range is huge, and I have read stories
where a bear was taken 100 miles, tagged and released and still
returned
to the same hives two weeks later!
Something that I have wanted to try that is popular up here (NE VT) is
to have the local hunters run the bear with their huntings dogs. This
practice is done to train the dogs and the bear is not physically
harmed
(just treed and scared half to death!) and seems an effective way to
discourage the bear from returning to the area where the dogs found
him.
Bears HATE dogs. I have asked the game warden to put me in touch with
one of these guys, but it hasn't happened yet.
I guess none of what I've said paints a very rosy picture if you've had
bears attack your hives and are trying to figure out a way to stop them.
I'm sorry I can't give a definitive solution to this problem.
My own method of dealing with bears is not something which can be mass-
marketed. I have my hives approx 75' from a breaker box that serves my
poultry coops. My original design was to wire a 30amp breaker with #10
romex and then connect the neutral lead to one sheet of metal
roofing and
the hot lead to another sheet of roofing. the neutral plate goes on the
ground in front and behind the hives (kept isolated from the earth by
6x6's) and the hot plate goes on top of the hives. The theory is
that the
bear must step on the neutral plate to reach the hives. When he
reaches to
push the hive over he completes the circuit....and BANGO!!!! I can't
report on the effectiveness of this because I have yet to zap even one
hapless bruin with this method. Just yesterday I changed my layout to
be less cumbersome by setting up a typical fence line around the
hives, but
I used #12awg bear (pun inteded) copper as my fencing, connected to the
#10 romex and the 30amp breaker. This should also be an effective
deterrent.
A bit sadistic perhaps, but probably effective. Obviously, this set-up
could not be used in a more populated area where someone may wander
into it
or anyplace where there be small children or large pets. I only
energize my
'fence' during night hours, when bear attacks are most likely.
Well that's all folks. I apoligize to the bw police. I know this is
long.
I hope this info is of some help.
Reference: Bee Culture magazine, March 1996
Tim Peters, Kirby VT
[log in to unmask]
KirBee Apiary, Bear Bait Honey
I rather be flying!
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