Oh, sad, sad day. Last week we woke up one morning to find this:
Boxes and frames strewn around the bee yard,
little clumps of bees holding onto each other for warmth,
and a huge pile of bear you-know-what in the middle of the garden.
Bill went out and tried to make sense of the carnage. He went through every box and frame and tried to piece our hives back together. The bear just tipped over Aretha's hive and didn't bother very much to rip things apart. But Priscilla's hive was a wreck. Bill found teeth marks and swipe marks over many frames where Mr or Mrs bear got a good meal. Several frames were absolutely torn and broken, and a couple were flat out missing, having been taken along for a later snack.
By that afternoon, things weren't looking so good for Priscilla's hive. This is not normal bee behavior, and we were pretty sure they were going to swarm away. Not even a pending storm and "rain" (from our sprinkler since the sky didn't cooperate with its own) could persuade them back inside. Probably Priscilla is dead, either from the bear or from exposure all night.
We were absolutely sure the bear would return, now knowing where to get a good tasty meal, so Bill decided to move the hives away from our backyard and up to his bee yard on campus where there's a tall and sturdy fence surrounding it. So he and a friend smoked the heck out of Priscilla's hive, got them inside and boarded up, and carried both hives out of our backyard to the truck.
Each hive was pretty heavy, being full of bees and honey. Aretha's boxes are probably 200 lbs, and Priscilla's a little less (having lost so much to the intruder).
Bill had to drive with his veil and gloves on; these were not happy bees! He said he got quite a few looks as he went through town.
And before Bill got back from reinstating the hives, before it was even really dark, that bastard bear came back for more. I went out back and yelled at it to leave us alone and not ever come back and called it some bad names. It didn't exactly high-tail it and scamper away from my wrath, but it did climb over our fence and amble away along the neighborhood. So far as we know, it hasn't come back again yet. But those bear noses are soooo sensitive, they can smell honey a long way off, and we are now on the radar. We won't bring any bees back until we have a better system in place. Either a super tall and sturdy enclosure is needed, or an electric fence. Since we don't have any neighbors behind us, we've always planned on getting an electric fence. So we're saving our pennies, now that our gamble has failed.
Bill checked on the hives a couple days later, and both hives still have bees inside. That's a good sign. Or at least it's not a bad sign. So we'll see over the next week and month how they get along, if they can get oriented to their new home well enough, and if Priscilla is in fact still with her hive. It's bad timing (when would it be good?) since it's almost winter. They need to have all their stores in place and seal up their home so they can survive the cold without blooming flowers. Aretha's seems like it has a good chance; Priscilla is quite a bit dodgier.
We're trying to be optimistic. The backyard and garden, and in fact the whole neighborhood, seems quite lonely and bereft of bees. (Not to mention, the bees that came home that night to find their entire hive boxes missing and were instantly homeless were in quite a bad mood. The backyard was not a happy place to be for a few days. Several beings were stung several times.) It's like Londoners sending their children to live with relatives in the country during the War; once the threat of attack has passed, they can come home again where they belong.
