GardenFork – Eclectic DIY

Tag: bear proof

  • Bear Proofing Your Beeyard : Beginning Beekeeping Video

    Bear Proofing Your Beeyard : Beginning Beekeeping Video

    In this video on bear proofing your bee hive, we talk about ways to keep bears away from you beehives. The largest danger to our beehives are bears. They are very common here in NW CT and we don’t want them wrecking our beehives.

    We read an article on bear proofing one’s hives in Bee Culture link here, by Ross Conrad, author of Natural Beekeeping, and have used a few of the bear proofing methods he wrote about for our hives.

    We are in our sophmore year of beekeeping, and don’t purport to be experts on beekeeping yet, but we wanted to document our first years of beekeeping and share them with you all.

    We have used this and other electric fences to bear proof the beeyard with good results. Your results may vary. Be very careful when dealing with bears. If there is one in your yard, get in the house, and get your dogs in the house too.

    Full disclosure, Premier 1 supplies sent us the electric fence for free. I think its a good product.

    Beekeepers: what methods do you use to safeguard your hives? let us know below

  • Bearproofing your beehives with a bear proof electric fence

    Bearproofing your beehives with a bear proof electric fence

    We are going to start a second beeyard at another farm. We wanted to have a second beeyard  as a hedge against the chance that a bear will destroy our existing honeybee hives.

    Our hives in their current location are surrounded by a traditional electric fence, three strands, and is part of a larger electric fence to keep beef cattle in their pasture. Bill, who owns the farm where our hives are, thinks the local bears are already aware of his electric fence, and have not tried to get to our beehives.

    But if the bear ever did, we would lose all our hives. So we decided this year to put a few hives at another friends farm, on the other side of town.

    premier 1 bear fence
    The Electro Net fence protecting a beeyard, photo from Premier 1

    I started to look in to bear proofing and saw an ad in Bee Culture magazine for a bear proof electric fence that will protect beehives from bears. I contacted the company, Premiere 1, and they sent me an ElectroNet 9/35/12 electric fence and a PRS 50 Solar Energizer at no charge to use in our new beeyard.

    The solar Energizer, which contains the battery and electronics to zap bears, is housed in metal box that looks like it was engineered for space travel. Its pretty bulletproof.

    The electric fence and solar powered energizer for our beeyard
    Interior of the solar powered energizer

    We’ll shoot a GardenFork show about starting a new beeyard and installing this fence, and I’ll report back on how it works with our local bears. Thanks for Premier 1 for sending me this.