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Joel,

I have a "bear" fence that so far has kept the bears at bay in Ralph.  I am off grid so I use solar panels and batteries.  You can save big bucks if you have AC power.  My system is pretty fancy and overbuilt.  The fence is 6 feet high and 3/4 of a mile long with 7 strands of 14 gauge steel wire.  Make sure you have a strand close to the ground to keep out skunks etc.  YOU MUST WEED WHACK around the fence wire to keep it from being grounded by grass and weeds.  The system must bee grounded by pounding galvanized steel rods into the ground.

I have 40 watts of solar panels charging a 12 volt deep cycle battery.  There is charge controller between the battery and the panels so I don't overcharge the battery.  The fence charger is a Zabara (sp) DC 50 which puts out 2  joules of power.  This unit can allegedly charge 50 miles of fence.  I have only about 3/4 mile of wire.  The test shows over 7,000 volts in the fence.  I designed the fence system to protect my apple orchard from deer as well as my hives.  

I would say I have $500 in my system.  Charger 140, battery 80, solar panels 160, charge controller 7,  wire etc about 100 so about $500.  

Could achieve the same voltage with a much smaller charger..say a 10 mile charger with an ORV 12 volt battery and a 10 watt solar panel charger.  Make the fence 4 feet high with 4 strands of wire.   A bear fence need only be high enough so the bear can't jump over (bears are not good jumpers).  So I think you could set up a bear fence for a few hives for maybe $150.  

Of course, if you have AC power you can save a lot of money because you wouldn't need solar panels and a battery!  You could get a nice AC charger for $100 bucks and the wire is not expensive.

Feel free to forward this email.

Dave Payant

          HERE THEY ARE

About a month ago I helped Patti Karwoski capture one of her swarms for the second time.  It was a real adrenalin rush!  See photos.
Then a week later my husband received a call at work noting a swarm in someone's tree in the Marquette downtown area.  Since I had some experience, we decided to try to capture it for these concerned neighbors.  We successfully directed about 80% of them into a box.  Now we had a box of bees and nowhere to put them.  In the excited rush of it all we hadn't thought it through.  Joel saved the day!  He was able to hook us up with someone who had lost his bees last winter. The bees were given to a good home.  The next day we checked the original swarm tree and the remaining 20% had balled up there over night.  Fearing that we hadn't captured the Queen, we cut the limb down and added it to the new home we found.
 
Susan Payant

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We had a rather exciting start to our 4th of July.  Let’s start on the afternoon of July 3rd, ‘bout 4:30.  Working out in the yard (not the bee yard – about 100, 150 feet away), I heard what seemed like louder-than-normal buzzing (understatement of the day!).  Approaching the bee yard, I could see a lot of activity, but nothing that looked like a swarm…just sounded like what I’d expect a swarm to sound like. 
Well, turns out it was a swarm - I just hadn't seen it initially.  Saw it as a cloud of bees up high near some spruce, but then lost sight of it. Visiting family arrived & we were unable to give chase & couldn’t find them later.  Chalked it up to lost bees.

Next morning, Kev was in the yard, heard a loud buzzing, hollered for me. “Was this what you saw yesterday?”  Low & behold – “the cloud” was back & it appeared to be trying to get into a hive.  Kev thought it might be a case of robbing.  (Meantime, I’m calling beekeeping friends – Wendy & Phil – and looking through various bee books.)  Short time later, the cloud moved away from the beeyard, but was close by.  Eventually, they balled up onto a branch & we were able to retrieve them into another hive body.  (Wendy, Phil, we did end up doing it in two batches, as the bees were balled up over two branches.  Kev wanted to do it all in one shot, but I reasoned, cajoled, finally nagged until he listened to the Voice of Reason (mine!).)  Attached a few pics that our neighbors & good friends, Tom & Barb Bach, took for us.

A shrub with lots of pollen and a lot of bee activity. Any thoughts on what it is????

45-60 people attended the "bee social" wednesday evening.  A warm evening for a change and the bees were happy.  Opened several hives, checked brood pattern and development, and put feed on.  On to the house for some food and a nice variety of meads.  Thanks go to John and Melissa of Algoma Meadery for their mead donations. Did anyone take a picture of the mead table?

I am always amazed by the continued and growing interest in bees.  We certainly have a growing and dedicated group of beekeepers.

** PHOTOS BY DAVID VORE