Minding your Bees and Cues

If Bears were Bees
By: Becky Masterman & Bridget Mendel

“If Bears were bees, they’d build their nests at the bottom of trees.” Thus spoke Winnie the Pooh, the iconic bear whose paw is forever in the honey pot.

In a way, we’ve conceded to Pooh’s wishes by keeping our bees in Langstroth hives, near the ground. Easy enough for bears to knock apart and eat up those delicious grubs.

Here in the Midwest, bears are bad this year. They are bursting through electric fences, barging into apiaries, busting into brood boxes, battering frames and leaving a total mess in their wake. Our reaction is a mix of impressed, mad and endeared. For something their size, bears are kind of cute.

Figure 1. Maps of the historical and 1995 estimate of the black bear range
in North America adopted from the North American Bear Center (bear.org)
website with permission.

Here in Minnesota, we have black bears (Ursus americanus), whose historical range used to cover most of the United States (Figure 1). Black bears typically live in the forests and swamps of the northern part of Minnesota where they eat acorns, berries and insects, and avoid humans. But in recent years, they have been increasingly ranging down to forage in corn fields, garbage cans, bird feeders and apiaries. Like all wild animals these days, their native habitat is threatened as forests turn into fields. And their forage can be impacted by erratic weather, especially extreme drought, impelling them to visit non-traditional areas like open fields or suburban yards.

A little black bear fact checking might help you understand why this beloved-by-many mammal is a formidable apiary pest. Black bears are big (and strong) with the average adult male weight at 300lbs and female at 160 lbs. While they tend to stay away from humans, their home ranges are vast with males covering 100 square miles and females at 25-50 square miles. They can live for 30-40 years in the wild and are highly intelligent. Add a keen sense of smell (their nasal mucosa area is 100 times larger than humans) that some say can extend to a mile or more and their preference for eating honey bee pupae and larvae as a source of fat and protein, your apiary might be vulnerable if in smell’s range of a black bear (www.bear.org, Bear Series, Part One: A Bear’s Sense of Smell – Yosemite National Park (U.S. National Park Service) – Yosemite Ranger Notes (nps.gov) and Berchielli, L., & Stegemann, E. (2004). Black Bears. New York State Conservationist, 59(2), 15–18.)

Photo 1. After the bear fence was breached multiple times and destroyed numerous colonies, Mark Sundberg had to drop this beeyard. Photo Credit: Mark Sundberg, Sundberg Apiaries, Inc.

If you’ve ever had a bear get into your apiary, you know the best word to describe them is destructive. Electric fences are a fix but not foolproof. Mark Sundberg, owner of Sundberg Apiaries, Inc. and current Minnesota Honey Producers Association President shared that fence costs to a commercial beekeeper with over 100 yards in bear territory can be significant. Sundberg said, “The real cost of fencing yards just begins with putting up the fence. It’s the ongoing maintenance and battery expense that makes it so burdensome.”

Photo 2. Bears are not just a rural problem for beekeepers. Black bear issues
are not uncommon in Minnesota suburban apiaries. Photo credit: Tom Minser, Nature’s Nectar, Inc.

For smaller operations, ratchet straps can also keep bears from being able to break apart boxes (in some cases) but again, once the bear knows about the bees, she will knock over the colony over and over again, even if she can’t break it apart.

Bears are not just a rural problem. Tom Minser, owner of the Twin Cities bee supply store Nature’s Nectar, has his pulse on area bear sightings and apiary ambushes. Servicing many new small-scale beekeepers, Minser includes bear deterrence in his advice to those establishing apiaries. Fences need to be installed preventively, before the bear ever discovers the bees. Once she finds your bees, a bear won’t be deterred by a quick zap.

What to do if a bear gets into your bees? It’s important to report it to the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) or your state’s equivalent agency. Their job is to balance the desire for a healthy bear population, but not one that bothers people. The number of problematic bears reported could affect things like the length and permits of bear hunting season, as well as their efforts to restore bear habitat. The DNR wants you to report bears, not just so they can study populations but so that they can manage them.

Bears should be on a beekeeper’s radar, but more importantly beekeepers should be proactive in communicating with agencies and organizations invested in the stabilization and/or restoration of bear populations. In the long term, reacting to bear threats in your apiary may not be as effective as having an organized plan. The Wisconsin Honey Producers have formed a Bear Committee and are working with Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources Black Bear Advisory Committee as stakeholders (Busy Bees – Mid-West Farm Report (midwestfarmreport.com)). Beekeepers in each state can communicate with the organizations who are making black bear decisions, document bear apiary damage and most importantly, encourage other beekeepers to take measures to protect our bees. This work also protects bears from getting in trouble. For all of us, this destructive but storybook worthy creature can inspire us once again to take action to mitigate climate change and ensure that important bear habitat is protected.

Becky Masterman led the UMN Bee Squad from 2013-2019. Bridget Mendel joined the Bee Squad in 2013 and has led the program since 2020. Photos of Becky (left) and Bridget (right) looking for their respective hives. If you would like to contact the authors with your own bear stories or other thoughts, please send an email to
mindingyourbeesandcues@gmail.com.

Resource
For excellent information on bear fence installation and maintenance, please visit:
How to Build an Electric Bear Fence – Carolina Honey bees https://carolinahoneybees.com/electric-fence-for-bears/