The past two days have been crazy for all of us here. On July 3rd at 3:00 am a very big bad bear decided to come for a visit. Not only did he wake me, Bandit, and Sadie out of our beauty sleep he pushed over the bee hive.
He sat there boldly eating my bees in the front yard. Not a care in the world,well maybe he is a bit hungry as they have closed his fast food restaurant aka the dump. Dogs frantically barking,me yelling he really didn't care.
Once day light came I knew that I had to put the hive together as best as I could. My son in law was dropping my grand kids off for the day at 5:45 am. I was going to relax this summer....ha ha ha.
After meeting with the bee inspector, filling out a bear damage report, fixing the electric fence -it didn't work-( in 30C temps wearing a bee suit) trying to blow up a pool for my grand daughter, fix lunches, snacks, tend to bee stings on three dogs, wipe up dog puke, wipe my grand daughter's bum, and take many phone calls from worried family and friends I tried to close my eyes for a few minutes.
How the time flys when you are having fun.
It was about 7;30 pm when I yelled HOLY CRAP that BAD BEAR is back. My grand daughter tells me "Grandma watch your mouth" She is almost eight and has all the answers.
This bear is huge and is in front of my house! He walks over to the hive and the bees are just crazy, dogs are barking, I'm banging metal dog dishes, phone is ringing and my grand daughter is watching cartoons! Next I know the bear leaves and I haven't seen him since.
Yes I still want to keep bees!
I'll bet it didn't occur to you when you set up your hives that you would have Winnie the Pooh pay a visit.
ReplyDeleteI was talking to my Dave this morning about your bear problems and he had a great idea to thwart the bear... get a paintball gun! They really hurt, they mark the bear with paint for next time and will likely aggravate him so much he won't bother coming back. Dave also suggested firecrackers as a way to scare him. Short of using a real gun, he doesn't know what else to do to keep the bear away.
ReplyDeleteI kind of like the idea of using a paint gun... it sounds like fun to me!
Thank Dave for all his plans for keeping the bear away. I think I might set up a paintball field in my front yard (that is where the bear hangs out) I can sell tickets to the event and it might help me get a new queen bee.
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