# Anti-bear bee fortress; nearly completed.



## beeware10

you have too much spare time. lol good luck


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## Barry

Please take pictures when you drop a super full of bees or honey of that deck or when you back up a little too hard and end up going over holding the super! In no time you'll wish you made it 4 times bigger. Gonna get pretty crowded up there real fast. Looks nice!


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## dloop

Wow!

That's amazing.


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## Aerindel

Already wish it was bigger but its cost me over $1k as it is.

And do't worry, if I fall off I'll almost certainly get hung up in the barb wire before I hit the ground.


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## HTC

And a cat found its way through O YA and this will stop a bear! I did notice two chairs. Who is crazy enough to sit up there with you? All so where is the 50 cal. and the clamors?


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## Aerindel

I actually I had to carry the cat up, She was looking up at me like she was worried I was going to fall off or something  You can't really see it in the pictures but the base of the ladder is in the main towers moat so it should be safe from bears even if I leave it up.

Guns are in my bedroom but don't work very well for protection against bears unless I am manning the tower 24/7. The second and final time my hive got knocked over I had been running armed patrols every twenty minutes all night but that was too long and it got in through my electric fence between patrols and finished off the job.

I seriously considered land mines after loosing my last hive but there are five dogs that run around the property so that was out. 

Second chair was for my girlfriend, who also gave me the money for the building. That reminds me...now that the bee fortress is done I have to build her a kitchen.


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## Charlie B

Cool bee fort! :thumbsup:


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## EastSideBuzz

Are you going to add a crane? and a row of archers.


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## WVMJ

Why dont you add a bridge to the house and you wont have to climb up the ladder Wouldnt a bear dog be cheaper? Now you can do little cutouts on the side and mount your hives inside the tower to help protect them from the winter. You can paint each tower you build a different color so you bees dont drift between towers WVMJ


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## DC Bees

Looks like a good hunting seat.You could have made one out of chain link fence and some 4x4's.A medium super weighs 65lbs,you may need an elevator,good luck.


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## Mbeck

You have a very cool girlfriend!


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## BeeTax

Can your bees come out and play?


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## gjd

You know bears are very comfortable climbing trees, right? Because that pine near it looks pretty close.


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## sqkcrk

You probably have some big bears there in MT. What kind?


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## Ozone

What is a bear dog? Do they work?

Always?


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## beeG

Ozone said:


> What is a bear dog? Do they work?
> 
> Always?



The Komondor was reported to be capable to deter bear. But you have to keep them corded so the hair protects them from an actual confrontation with a bear. The Komondor was so effective of irradiating wolves from its native country Hungry it is one of the oldest guardian dog breeds . The cords are like dreadlocks. And they act as armor. Neat bee fort


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## Aerindel

> Why dont you add a bridge to the house and you wont have to climb up the ladder


I thought about that a lot and in the end I decided it wouldn't be worth nocking a hole in the wall of the house for the door. I plan on building an addition to the house this summer and a wrap around deck that should give me better access.



> Wouldnt a bear dog be cheaper?


Between my neighbor and I there are five german shepherds on the hill that love to chase beers but they all sleep inside at night. Sometimes they wake up and bark when there are bears outside but not always and it only takes once. I think the bears know when the dogs are inside and wait until then to cause problems.



> Now you can do little cutouts on the side and mount your hives inside the tower to help protect them from the winter. You can paint each tower you build a different color so you bees dont drift between towers


Interesting Idea. I have been thinking about wrapping clear plastic over the top and side of the railings to help hold in the heat during the coldest parts winter, kind of like a mini greenhouse.



> You probably have some big bears there in MT. What kind?


We just have blackbears in my area, which can get pretty big but not as big as grizzlies. Mostly they are just extremely determined in a kind of stupid way. They will go through far more work than its worth to get food and sometimes just randomly destroy stuff to see it its edible. I learned that I can't leave gas cans around because the bears will bite them to see whats inside.



> You know bears are very comfortable climbing trees, right? Because that pine near it looks pretty close.


Its farther away than it looks, its about eight feet away. Blackbears do climb pretty well but I've never seen them jump long distances, they usually weigh about four hundred pounds and don't seem to fly very well 

I may end up cutting down that tree anyway.



> You have a very cool girlfriend!


I think so too.



> Looks like a good hunting seat.You could have made one out of chain link fence and some 4x4's.A medium super weighs 65lbs,you may need an elevator,good luck.


Sadly its not legal to hunt on my property. I live on an Indian reservation, no building codes or permits of any kind needed but no hunting rights for non natives and I'm a white guy. There is a herd of about fifty whitetails that pass through the clearing below my house everyday yet I have to drive fifty miles away to hunt and often don't see anything.

I could have made some kind of fence but it probably would have ended up being more expensive and more work. By the time you bury the base three feet deep and build an overhang into the top you may as well just build a building. This way I not only have a place to put the bees but a nice storage shed for all the extra bee stuff.


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## Barry

Please beef up that railing. Won't take much to push it over and then you'll be tangled up in that razor wire!


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## Aerindel

Don't worry, its strong. The 2x4s go down the side of the building and are screwed to the rafters in five places with 3 1/2" screws, not just butt joined to the deck. If you look you can see they have about a foot of overlap with the deck and rafters. I the 2x4s themselves would break before those screws pulled out.


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## virginiawolf

Please send a picture or a link of a video to this post of the bears at the bottom moaning because they can't get any honey comb or larvae to eat


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## NW_Mark

Ozone said:


> What is a bear dog? Do they work?
> 
> Always?


One of the best Karelian Bear Dog. Used by many


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## rurbanski

Man I’m jealous. 

That is a really awesome fort… 

You could add a little hand crank crane arm to help get heaver things up and down. I would pull the 2x4 anti-personal obstacles out of the ground. After you fall through the wire hitting those would really suck. Drive some 10 penny through a 2x4 (like a bed of nails) and screw them into the walls nails out to keep the bears from destroying the walls or trying to climb.

And if the little lady approves of something like that going in next to the house (assuming the 2 of you are not 8 years old) she is super cool.


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## Aerindel

> And if the little lady approves of something like that going in next to the house (assuming the 2 of you are not 8 years old) she is super cool.


lol.....she is a lot older than 8....old enough to be done with college and have job that makes twice as much as mine, which gives us extra money to build cool things.


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## newbeee

THAT...is impressive. 

I was envisioning those 2x4's driven into the ground encircling the fortress wrapped with electric barb wire.........motion lights set up on sirens......flash bang cannons.......LOL.....ya get the idea. ;-) ohh I forgot to add.....running outta your house in the middle of the night as the sirens, lights, and flashbangs are going off in your undies holding a shotgun, and releasing the hounds......HA


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## Kamon A. Reynolds

Very awesome! Keep us posted on how it works for you!

If you wanted you could have all the entrances facing out and have each hive next to the other so you have 75% of the deck to work behind them. Plus you won't have forager bees constantly coming in on all sides. You would have to change feeders to do this but it's just a thought.


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## HONEYDEW

Aerindel said:


> Mostly they are just extremely determined in a kind of stupid way. They will go through far more work than its worth to get food


 Hmmmmmmm kinda like beeks......cool place looks like a straw bale house shaped like a castle in background ??


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## Aerindel

> cool place looks like a straw bale house shaped like a castle in background ??


Yup, thats exactly what it is. So far its just one round three story tower that I live in and now the wooden bee tower but I have plans for three more connected towers with an enclosed courtyard.


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## Luv2beekeep

If yu have five german shepards that chase "beers" then it is no wonder you have to do patrols every twenty minutes. After so many beers the dogs aren't worth much are they.LOL
Nice bear fort.


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## justin

don't forget to dip the sharp end of the pungee sticks in the outhouse hole before you use them. we had a bad bear year last year. they skipped the hives and came on the porch for the dog food, and a couple 40 pound boxes of pollen sub. good luck. justin


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## Adam Foster Collins

Just when I was beginning to think I was too obsessive over bees, and that perhaps I was putting too much time into working on hives and traps and whatnot.

Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you!

I've got to show this to my disgruntled girlfriend.

Adam


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## Fuzzy

Can't resist..... I have a dollar that says that the bears will eventually get the hives on the tower !! Perhaps not this year, but certainly during next year.


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## Kelbor

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.


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## Acebird

Aerindel said:


> And do't worry, if I fall off I'll almost certainly get hung up in the barb wire before I hit the ground.


I would think the bear would laugh at the barbed wire. Nice observation deck. I wonder how much there is to forage in the middle of a pine forest? Seeing as how you have all these nice trees close by, wouldn't it be easier and cheaper to suspend the hives about 10 ft off the ground with cables that you could crank up and down to service.


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## Kevin245

EastSideBuzz said:


> Are you going to add a crane? and a row of archers.


A moat and a draw bridge seem in order.


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## Aerindel

Updated pictures showing how it connects to the rest of the house. So far so good as far as bears go but as you can see one of my hives isn't doing so good.


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## Gypsi

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.)


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## Acebird

Aerindel said:


> Updated pictures showing how it connects to the rest of the house.


Now doesn't that give the bears a bridge to your hives?:scratch:


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## Gypsi

When they finish the honey it gives a bridge to your kitchen! I don't think I'd go for the bridge. Just in case.


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## Charlie B

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.


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## Aerindel

> 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.


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## Gypsi

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!


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## LBSbandit

I want your life.


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## Charlie B

I knew you would like plan B Gypsi!


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## Gypsi

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...


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## TokerM

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!!!


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## Aerindel

> 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.


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## virginiawolf

I really like seeing the progress Aerindel. It is inspiring to see what you are creating. Nicely done so far. :thumbsup:


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## dnichols

All good stuff but how are the bees doing?


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## Aerindel

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.


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## kilocharlie

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!)


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## Aerindel

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.


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## Acebird

It doesn't look as though you spared any expense no matter what you use it for.


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## Charlie B

Now that's a spendy hive stand!


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## Gypsi

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!


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## kilocharlie

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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## Acebird

Somehow I think the sapper should be at the bottom. An electrode around the poles and a damp base to complete the circuit. Wet straw maybe.


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## Aerindel

> How's a fuzzy bear to wriggle maggot-style up a polished pole with Astro Glide on it?


Knowing bears, they would probably lick it off. I would have welded some short downward pointing spikes on the poles.



> I would consider higher, perhaps 20 feet, to more thoroughly discourage the bears.


That would no doubt help but my thought is that if the bear can climb the first ten feet it can probably climb the second ten feet. 

I think the really important thing to have on an bear proof platform is a good overhang. Bears are great climbers but they can't stick spiderlike to the bottom of things. From watching them go up trees it seems like they rely on strength more than agility. Keep them from getting a 'bear hug' on your poles and I don't _think_ they can climb.



> It doesn't look as though you spared any expense no matter what you use it for.


Lol, you should have seen some of my earlier designs. This one had a fifty foot antenna mast built into it. (Though to be fair, the antenna mast is something I picked up for free from the old firehall)










And then there was the geodesic steel dome idea inspired by this chicken run 










I actually really liked that idea but I have severe lack of flat ground on my property and I calculated that in order to build a dome high enough to cover an 8'x8' area 6' feet tall I would need a dome nineteen feet in diameter which would mean that I would have to level out and clear about four hundred square feet of forest floor. It was at this point that my girlfriend and financier told me "We're not going to build a bee dome larger than our freaking house."


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## Acebird

Aerindel said:


> "We're not going to build a bee dome larger than our freaking house."


See how they are... they just can't get into the concept of things.


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## kilocharlie

I'm just glad I'm not the bear! Its getting tough to steal a chicken or score some honey these days, eh, Yogi? Then again, that sniper rifle will likely have the deterring effect. I vote for a .416 Rigby, as the .477 Nitro Express I just accurized last month hasn't cooled down yet.


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## mouseandrat

yeah. I agree with you.


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