Ruinous and OverBearing

When I looked out the window the other morning, I was checking to see how much snow we’d gotten overnight. Huge snowstorms and power outages had been reported, but we’d only gotten about six inches.

The sun was shining, making everything sparkly and bright–I grabbed the dogs and we headed outside.

That was when I noticed that we’d had what looked like several overnight guests of the wild game variety.

The impressions in the snow, made by a combination of weight and body heat, were quite clear, as were the many sets of tracks. While I watched the dogs run around sniffing and peeing and pooping, I thoroughly enjoyed the idea of this little gang of deer bedding down for the night in our yard.

Smiling to myself about this little revelation, I grabbed the chicken crumble and headed around back to feed the hens and collect eggs.

And that’s when I saw it.

And I don’t know why I was surprised.

But our bear “friend” came back. And she didn’t leave a whole lot behind.

What had been two hives going into the summer had been reduced to one hive emerging from the winter. That happens. Loss happens for hundreds of different reasons. It’s just that I really thought the surviving hive was going to make it.

I’d made plans for it. We were gonna thrive and then split. We had a future. We just didn’t bargain for that last bear hit during a super cold snap. That combo was the one-two punch of certain destruction. Once the hive was opened up in those frigid temperatures, the bees had very little time before they froze to death. By the time I found them, they had likely been exposed to the elements for several hours.

I couldn’t even stand the thought of cleaning it all up. I walked away, dejected, and left it for the next day.

Overnight rains and increasingly warming temperatures left the entire area free of snow and generally easier to clean up. I got out there with my hand truck and started to collect all the pieces–that’s when I saw that all of the honey that HAD been in those frames just last month, was completely gone.

The bear had clearly just laid waste to my poor hive.

Every component of every super was strewn every which way. There wasn’t a drop of honey left in any of the frames, and the foundation had largely been torn away.

And, of course, there was not a single living bee.

Thousands of frozen-to-death bees littered the grass, the bottom boards, and the recently-emptied drawn comb. It was mass destruction on the tiniest scale and it bummed me out immensely.

Just when I’d gotten what I thought was all of the equipment collected and organized and stacked onto my hand truck, I saw something bright and yellow out in the woods.

I hiked out there and saw that the bear had, apparently, taken the honey super into the treeline for a little al fresco dining.

So I picked up everything ELSE that wasn’t wrecked and put it all away for… well, I don’t know for when right now.

I was so confident about this hive surviving, that I didn’t order a nucleus colony (nuc) from our local apiary. Nucs are quite pricey and usually need to be ordered before the end of March to ensure that you get one. For those reasons, this may turn out to be the first summer in ten years that I don’t have a hive.

Maybe I’ll start keeping deer instead.