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Anti-bear bee fortress; nearly completed.

26K views 60 replies 34 participants last post by  mouseandrat 
#1 ·
My solution to my bear problem:

Things to add, more spikes in the ground, and electrified wire running parallel to the concertina wire.









 
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#33 ·
Nice straw bale house. Free stacked or framed? My family (mom and step dad and me) stuccoed them for a few years all over the west coast from Alaska to S. California- natural soil plasters of course. Like the bear fortress too - I hate trying to explain/defend my crazy ideas to people.....it doesn't matter if these things work or not, the best part is creating them.
 
#37 ·
This is an amazing thread. I laughed so hard I forgot about mosquito spray and have tears running down my cheeks. Not at the fort, which is mega cool, but at the responses.

I'd offer to swap you a weasel for your bear, but my weasel isn't nearly this expensive to defeat. I'm down to 5 hens, but haven't lost one in a month. (as long as my darned dog doesn't damage the run I'm good.)
 
#41 ·
Now doesn't that give the bears a bridge to your hives?
Only if the bears have already broken down my front door, entered my kitchen and then broken down a second door leading to the bee deck. And since I make my own doors out of solid wood planks it seems unlikely.


I'm no bear expert but it looks to me like you still may have to run an electric fence around the top railings of your bee fort.
That was part of the original plan but there are so many other physical barriers to them getting that far I decided that it wasn't worth it to use the one anti-bear method that I know doesn't work, (at least not for me.)

On the other hand modern defensive doctrine emphasizes "defense in depth" where you use multiple layers of defensive systems, none of which is intended to be completely block the enemy but where each takes its toll until they can no longer advance.

The bigger threat is my habit of carelessly leaning ladders up against the side of my defenses. It seems like in every picture I took yesterday you can see a ladder in the wrong spot.




And then there is always plan B.

 
#42 ·
I'd put plan B in the kitchen, with a barrel sized hole in the window (covered with hinged plexiglass or something of course). Seems that when I see that squirrel or that weasel I am always at the kitchen sink, and with the cost of glass, and the noise sliding a window open makes, I never get the critter. Come to think of it, I think I have a window to modify!
 
#45 ·
Good thing I didn't get my window modified. A hawk had one of my young hens cornered today, saw him from the back window. He (or she) looked confused but went ahead and took off when I was about 6 ft away yelling "get out of my yard". Don't think Prairie Hawks are protected species, but they eat rats. Best stick to rats...
 
#46 ·
Is part of the multi-layered defense strategy the radioactive storage? Or is that much like me just buying an alarm company sticker for my window? If so, I'm not sure bears know that symbol, maybe try the flammable symbol, what with Smokey and all.

Also, from my Marine Corps experience, I would recommend triple-strand constantia wire, much more menacing of a look.

I LOVE THIS FORT!!!
 
#47 ·
Or is that much like me just buying an alarm company sticker for my window?
Exactly like that but its more for the neighbors than the bears :) Its a multihazard DOT placard that I found a long time ago and kept for decoration. You can change the flaps to say different things like 'Corrosive' or 'non flammable gas'

Also, from my Marine Corps experience, I would recommend triple-strand constantia wire, much more menacing of a look.
I may do that someday. The whole thing, house included is still very much a work in progress. Hopefully soon I will be able to post pics showing the outer wall that I plan to build along the edge of the deck connecting the bee fort to the kitchen addition.

I'd put plan B in the kitchen, with a barrel sized hole in the window (covered with hinged plexiglass or something of course).
I don't know if you can see it in the pictures but I have firing slits on the top floor of the tower underneath the eaves that give my 360º*coverage around the tower. The top floor is the bedroom which is where I am most likely to be during the hours that bears like to get up to trouble.

In all seriousness though I've only had one bear in twenty years that didn't run away when I yelled at it and that one was sent packing by a pistol shot into the ground between its legs, (it was twenty feet away standing up on two legs at the time)

I really don't have any desire to hurt bears, I just don't want them killing my bees.
 
#50 ·
One hive is doing great, they almost have all their winter honey stored. Two hives are strong but need to put on another twenty or so pounds. One hive is queenless, last time I checked, and is only about four frames of bees in one medium. It will probably get combined with one of the others before winter. All four hives where started May fourth this year.
 
#51 ·
An overhead gantry and a rope and harness would be a possible safety setup. Better plan each visit - mistakes with the bees will get uncomfortable. Smooth metal poles (galvanized steel?) to a raised platform might keep bears off better than a building and concertina wire. Automatic bear spray might be an avenue...as might loud, recorded bear harrassment noise (rap "music", machine gun noise, or perhaps the theme from Jeopardy played on the bagpipes!)
 
#52 · (Edited)
My very first plan was a metal pole cache type structure like this one:



(There is a pretty interesting article about bees vs bears that goes with this pic: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fe20030904cw.html)

But the more I thought about it the more I decided if I was going to go through that much effort that this needed to be a multiuse structure. I also thought about hoisting the hives up into the trees but I didn't think they would like the way the trees sway in the wind and by the time you buy rope and pulleys capable of lifting hundred pound hives you may as well build a platform.

Purely defensive structures are great fun to design but when you actually price them out you usually find they are so expensive that you pretty much have to make them serve more than one purpose to justify the expense. In the case of the bee fort its also a storage shed that I keep all my bee stuff in and if I ever decide not to have bees it will make a nice little deck.
 
#55 ·
The rap music alarm sounds good - and yes, that metal one is a spendy bee stand. Unless one happens to already have the pipe and the sheet metal sitting around. Not sure my sheet metal is thick enough, but I've got 3 10 ft pipes... ant proof too!
 
#56 ·
Aerindel - Thanks for the Japan Times link. The last comment at the bottom is classic - Grease the metal poles! How's a fuzzy bear to wriggle maggot-style up a polished pole with Astro Glide on it? And yes, an electric wire to zap him up near the top will really teach him a lesson if he gets that far.

Both the metal platform and yours appear to be 10 to 12 feet high. I would consider higher, perhaps 20 feet, to more thoroughly discourage the bears. The cost objection could be taken up by a bee club...
 
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