Oh, Bear; don’t despair

Zack Comeaux

It wasn’t what I expected to see; I sort of went into shock. Toppled boxes and scattered frames. I had just expected to check on what should have been queen right nucs. No, I finally experienced the bear.

The apiary, yesterday five colonies and half a dozen splits in progress, was at the foot of Muddy Creek Mountain and my friends up there had lost their bees to bears. My farmer host had seen a young one scamper down the creek near my hives a year ago. Was it luck or had my electric fence kept them away so far? The question now was, how did the fence fail now? But we’ll deal with that later. There is work to do.

So, there are some lessons to learn here. For one, depending on the time of year, all is not lost. Late May, there is still time to convert some of the wreckage to splits, or should we call them smashes. Later in the year I might combine more bees into a larger reconstructed unit better able to prepare for Winter. Another option would be to put smaller colonies over a larger one with a double screen between. This would keep queens/workers of the respective colonies separate while allowing the upper one to take advantage of heat from the colony below. I have overwintered smaller colonies this way. It all depends on where the bees are in their annual cycle and what you have left to work with.

Now the salvage can seem overwhelming. But I’ve worked some in the emergency room and know that when the bad wreck comes in you can’t just walk away. You ignore your feelings and go to work; you need to begin somewhere.

So, like contemplating my first move in our old childhood game of pickup sticks, I start to look through the toppled boxes and disheveled frames. For the moment, forget the scattered mess. Look where your remaining bees are.

Pooh Bear aside, bears are not after honey; they are after fats and protein, your uncapped brood. It is hard to believe that for much of the year a 500 pound black bear survives on ants, larva and the like.

If you are used to making splits, you know where to begin with reconstruction. If not. Here are some tips.

See where the bees are clustered. They will be most numerous on brood and on honey. Following those on brood is your best prospects for finding a queen, if you are lucky. If you find her, put that frame in the center of a nuc box or single box and build out a colony from there. The number of starts you try for depends on how many colonies have been damaged. I had three hives torn up, six nucs-in-progress mangled.

As I work, I realize my task is simplified since, years ago, I switched to using medium depth frames everywhere. No problem, since now any frame can be put anywhere.

There was a lot of nearly capped honey and a good bit of capped brood. The two queens I found went into nucs with the intent of keeping them portable and moving them quickly to another yard. There they could be expanded to a full box or two. As things progressed, I set aside a couple frames of nearly capped honey for extraction coming up soon (if the other two colonies don’t get ripped up). Each start got either a queen or some eggs and young larva from the remaining colonies. Look for a frame or two of capped brood, a frame of pollen and also one or two of honey. The brood is important to offset the progressive attrition of your current workers and the twenty-one days required for a queen to raise up the first new workers. If you are putting in eggs and larva since you have no queen, you have another couple of weeks for a queen to hatch, mature, mate and start laying. Again, you need to start somewhere. Remember, though, to leave an empty frame either for your queen to lay or workers to store more nectar.

The frames that were rather full of honey but not capped, I sat at the end of the row in a box with a cover on top, out of the weather but available for robbing. I did not want to put it directly on top of one of the single boxes starts because it would make it too heavy to move alone. The wreckage with some honey value I left also out for robbing.

I see where Mr. Bear broke the bottom wire. Was the electric fence working? This is an out yard, so no 110 volts available. I use Parmak equipment and here was using an old 6-volt solar unit. Even if I had used the 12-volt larger model I still would have only generated a third of the joules available from a plug in unit to punch the bear. I had strengthened my fence a bit but noted that the charger was working. But later, moving the bees after sundown, there was no discharge. That’s the culprit here. Either the battery was shot or simply not charged up since the solar panel had not been in proper position.

Luckily, I was able to get some charge from my host’s pasture fence nearby. Enough? I am not sure, but there was nothing to be done that evening.
Intending a move, before I left the yard this afternoon, I screwed down the inner covers on the single boxes and taped the side cracks under the lid of the nucs. Returning this evening I stuffed the entrances with steel wool and off we went. Too late, too dark, too tired, I will leave the bees in the pick up under the cap tonight and set them out in the morning, at home.

It was a long day. Now, ten in the evening I am typing away after going back to pick up the starts in the late light. But I feel like I made the most of the situation.

Sometimes keeping bees is like managing a checking account. You need to keep making deposits (raising new queens/colonies) if you expect to make withdrawals. Today the lesson is that beekeeping is like the stock market; it has its ups and downs.

Some lessons learned, I am going to bed.