By Rosanna Trestman

If it ain’t one thing, it’s another.

Several seasons back, Star Childs reported on the trials and tribulations of several Norfolk beekeepers, whose hives were repeatedly molested by a burgeoning black bear population. Deprived of their honey, and stung by their bees, they all promised to persevere in 2007.

Good news on the bear front. Armed with the benefit of experience and determination, three of our resident beekeepers, Wiley Wood, Shelley Harms and Ed Machowsky won the battle.

Shelley Harms went low-tech this year, as last season’s multiple lines of defense failed. “There have been no bear breaches so far,” reports Harms “we erected a real fence this year, 10 feet high. Actually, it’s to keep the chickens from flying out and it’s not that sturdy, but the bears don’t know that.”

Last year she built a trellis, ringed it with wire, and attached an electric fence to barricade the hives. Not only did the fortress fail to dissuade the bears, but Harms was the one who usually got shocked.

After each attack, there were 4 or 5 of them, Harms needed to don a bee suit to rebuild the hives, of course getting stung in the process. “Then the hives died in the barn over the winter,” she laughed.

Beekeepers can be anxious every step of the way. “I know a bear can get in this fence if it tried. Every night I worry.” For good reason – her resident bear frequently accosts her garbage. On the plus side, Harms’ bees haven’t left and she keeps an optimistic attitude. “I credit the bees with the bumper apple crop we’re enjoying now.”

Wiley Wood is armed to the teeth. Like Harms’, last year’s bears were undeterred by a little electric shock. “I’ve beefed up the security system this year,” says Wood. This time he installed a more powerful electric fence that is wired into the CL&P grid. Strips of tin foil attached to the fence are baited with peanut butter to jolt the bear, thus aborting an assault. Not a bear has yet to test the system, “but,” as Wood explains, “the dogs go for the peanut butter and every once in a while I hear a yelp. No bear, just dog.”

Swarming is another story.

In the Spring, Wood started two hives in commercially-made boxes, which were later transported to the orchard. When Wood was away late July, the bees took advantage of his absence and made a break for it.

When honeybees swarm, often just a faction breaks off, following their queen to a new location. They swarm for various reasons, mostly overcrowding and overheating. “Managed hives are less likely to swarm,” Wood explains. Had he been around he could have moved them to the shade and alleviated the crowding.

A lesson learned the hard way, Wood’s humiliation was compounded with a phone message from Coolwater, a neighboring home, reporting a swarm nesting in the siding of the house. “They had to be my honey bees,” Wood deducted. Once under siding, the bees are impossible to get out. The only solution is to call an exterminator. Using a stethoscope to locate the center of activity, the exterminator drills a hole and gasses the hive.

Wood continued to lose the bee population that he had worked so hard to build up over the course of the summer. Clusters would form and hang out in the trees for days at a time. Unlikely to return once out of the hive, the beekeeper’s only resource is to sweep them back into a hive box, making sure to get the queen. Of course this frenetic detail entails donning the ungainly bee suit and enduring the obligatory bee stings.

Nevertheless, the bees swarmed 4 more times, nesting in the siding of neighbors’ homes. The exterminator was called again and again, at a not insubstantial cost.

One homeowner reports, a bit cantankerously, of getting stung. Another claimed to have heard a noise, almost like a motor, and looked up to see a huge cloud of bees heading again toward Coolwater, which got hit twice. An exceptionally first-hand experience was endured by neighbor, David Mawicke. “I was inside and heard bees buzzing outside the window. That’s quite a few, I thought. About an hour later I heard a lot of noise. There were thousands of them.” Just then Wood, alerted by a witness who saw where the large swarm was headed, came to the rescue. “First I needed to let David out of the house. He was trapped inside,” said Wood. Suited up and armed with a bottle of soapy water, Wood sprayed his way to the front door. “Bees just fall to the ground,” he explained.

Wood expects that they are done swarming for the year. “I will put my mind to coming up with a solution for next year,” he says, in the meantime “I have to distribute this [very expensive] honey among the victims.

This Spring was the first year Fred Machowski took up beekeeping. “I’ve sighted bears around our property, but there has been no physical evidence of them trying to get thru the fence,” which was erected for this purpose.

However, his labor of love met the same fate as that of his colleagues. Starting with 2 hives, he lost a half of one in July. “I looked quite a bit for the swarm” he says, “but don’t have a clue where they went.” Sounding resigned, he reports that the remaining half “is sluggish and never fully recovered.” But all is not lost, the first hive bees are “going to town. I don’t expect them to swarm anymore,” he pronounces. “Of course once you print this all hell will break loose.”

Photo, top, by Adela Hubers: Norfolk beekeeper Wiley Wood gingerly inspects his colony.