Deterring Bears using Electric Fencing with John Rath (S6, E16)

S6, E16 - Deterring Bears using Electric Fencing with John Rath

Dr. Jon Zawislak: Hi, this is Dr. Jon Zawislak with the University of Arkansas, Division of Agriculture. You're listening to the Beekeeping Today podcast.

Jeff: Welcome to Beekeeping Today podcast, your source for beekeeping news, information, and entertainment presented by Betterbee. I'm Jeff Ott.

Kim: I'm Kim Flottum.

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Jeff: Thank you, Sherry, and a quick shout out to all of our sponsors whose support allows us to bring you this podcast each week without resorting to a fee-based subscription. We don't want that and we know you don't either. Be sure to check out all of our content on our website. There you can read up on all our guests. Read our blog on the various aspects and observations about beekeeping, search for download and listen to over 200 past episodes.

Read episode transcripts, leave comments and feedback on each show, and check on podcast specials from our sponsors. You can find it all at www.beekeepingtodaypodcast.com. Hey, thanks for joining, and a big thanks to Dr. Jon Zawislak for that opening. You too can help open a show by recording your greeting on your phone and sending it to us here. It is simple and easy to do.

Of course, you can also track me down at a conference say such as this weekend's Washington State Beekeepers Association meeting in Olympia, and I'll record your opening and greeting right there on the spot. Now, what could even be easier? Coming up, Kim and I talked with John Rath, co-owner of Betterbee Beekeeping Supplies about setting up electric fences. Mainly to keep out bears, but other pests or is that a predator on two legs as well?

Hey, there's no escaping it now. It's October and fall is here. You should have all your honey off by now and have treated or are in the process of treating your bees and knocked down the varroa and feeding those colonies that need it. Are you planning on insulating your hives for the winter? How do you go about doing it? Last year, I experimented with a foil-coated insulated bubble wrap along with a heavily insulated top.

Together they seem to work out really well for me in this part of the Pacific Northwest and that will be my approach again this year. What are you doing about those pests that see your beehives as shelter and as energy sources to get them through the winter? We'll be talking about bear fences in a moment, but what about those other pests that seek out the protection of your beehives? These critters may not be as infamous as some of those other hive pests, but they can cause considerable harm to your colonies.

Particularly during the colder winter months when food is scarce and your bees are clustered for warmth. Let's kick things off with the biggest nuisance, mice. As the temperature drops, a cozy bee hive becomes an attractive home for these rodents. Mice are cute until they get into your hive where they can do some damage chewing through the comb, fouling the hive, et cetera.

The best way to deter mice is with mouse guards, metal or plastic barriers with bee size holes that can be fitted over the hive entrance. Make sure to install these before the first hard frost to ensure no unwelcome tenants move in. Mice are another reason why I like to use slatted racks on all my hives. It's an added piece of equipment to buy and maintain, but I believe ultimately they do pay for themselves. The slatted rack typically keeps the mouse from entering the brood chamber. Mice seem to be happy enough to build their nest and stay below the slats and the cluster, then ride out the winter there.

I've never had a mouse chew through a slat to get into the brew chamber. Now, I know that as I say that someone will want to write and tell me that they've experienced a mouse chewing through the slat and I don't doubt that at all. Mice are precocious critters. I've even had them total a car once by chewing through the main wiring harness and I didn't think they're anywhere near cute then.

It is just an added defense that also has benefits for the colonies throughout the year. While not a dead of winter pest, the following two animals can post challenges leading up to the winter and early in the spring, skunks and possums. Skunks are maternal pests and especially fond of feasting on bees. Their thick fur is a good defense to bee stings. If you notice paw marks are scratching it around your hive, it's a good sign that you may have a skunk problem.

Raising your hive a few inches off the ground exposes the skunks less protected underside to stings while making it more difficult for them to reach the bees. Chicken wire can also be an effective, non-lethal way to keep them at bay. Lastly, there are possums, though not as common, possums can also feed on your bees. They're climbers, so elevated hives really won't stop them much if they're determined.

Your mouse guards will be the best defense if you have a marauding possum. Even as you prepare to hear about bear proofing your bee with electric fences, don't overlook these smaller nuisances. A little bit of prevention can go a long way in ensuring your colonies are strong, healthy, and ready to face the winter months. One less item on this fall list of pest predators, yellow jackets. I know everyone's probably dealing with those.

If you want to find out more about dealing with yellow jackets, check out Kim and Jim's Honey Bee Obscura Podcast on dealing with Yellow Jackets. It's available right now wherever you download podcasts. All right, now that we've got those bases covered, let's move on to today's main discussion with John Rath on how to keep the most formidable of pest bears away from your hives. First, a quick word from our friends at Strong Microbials.

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Jeff: While you're at the Strong Microbial site, make sure you click on and subscribe to the Hive. They're regular newsletter full of interesting beekeeping facts and product updates. Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. Sitting across the virtual Beekeeping Today podcast interview table is John Rath. One of the partners of Betterbee. John, welcome to the show.

John: Hey guys, thanks for having me.

Kim: It's good to meet you, John.

Jeff: We've invited John to the show today to talk to us about electric fences and how electric fences are used by beekeepers, and what to consider if you're thinking about an electric fence for your bee yard. Before we get to that, John, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background and just who you are?

John: I went to school for mechanical engineering. I spent part of my career doing power plant engineering. I've grown up with bees, and my dad was big into beekeeping-- both my parents big into beekeeping. My dad became an owner of Betterbee back in 2012. He was always calling and asking me for help. I joined him in 2014, and I became a partner in 2017. I do warehouse stuff, product design, manufacturing, all that sort of stuff. I wear lots of hats at Betterbee

Jeff: Well, we're here to draw on your-- no electrical pun there, draw on your experience on the electricity and mechanical engineering on electric fences. I appreciate your support as part of Betterbee.

Kim: Maybe a good way to start this was I come in your front door, and you're standing there, and I say, "Can you help me?" You say, "Yes, sir, what do you need?" I say, "I need an electric fence to keep bears out of my bee yard. Where do I start?" There's all sorts of things you're going have to know before you can start making recommendations. The soil and all of the available power, all of those things, so you're probably going to ask me some questions so that you can make a better decision. Does that sound about right?

John: Yes, for sure. First I would say, it's a good idea to have the fence before you need it. If the bears have already found your hives, then it's a much bigger challenge to keep them out. We've been having that problem lately here at Betterbee. We've had some very persistent bears that just don't give up. It's best to prevent them and try to keep the taste of honey and the taste of brood out of their mouths for as long as possible.

Kim: Well, quick question then would be, okay, they've wrecked me twice. I'm wanting to do something, but you're telling me I should have had them up before, so now I'm going to have to move them. Is that right?

John: That is one way to move them. They can also be deterred sometimes by a better

electric fence. If you have one and they're getting through it, you can improve it and keep them away. Two months ago I would've said, "Oh, yes, good-enough electric fence, you'll keep them out," but we've had one that keeps coming back even with a high-joule five-wire fence, four-feet tall, the bear just doesn't care. Not to scare you, they can be fended off most of the time

Jeff: When someone says electrical fence, my first thought is the Constantine fencing that we saw in Jurassic Park, they keep something out. What is an electric fence and how does it work?

John: Electric fences that beekeepers use and most farmers use are a far cry from the Jurassic Park fence. There's a conductor and there's a device that puts electricity into the fence, usually with a pulse every one second or so. It's very high-voltage, but low-current. The whole goal is to send a little zap through an animal that's trying to get through the fence and it's painful, so it deters them. It even makes you flinch involuntarily when you touch it. Most animals don't like it and they will avoid getting shocked at all costs.

Jeff: If I'm looking at building an electric fence, can you use it to keep skunks and possums and stuff out of your bee yard too?

John: If small critters are a consideration, then you might want to consider an electric fence net, which has lots of wires horizontally and vertically, versus if you're just trying to keep bears out, you can use just horizontal wires more like a cattle fence or a horse fence.

Jeff: What are the key components of an electric fence?

John: Key components, I guess number one is the fence itself. You have some sort of post to keep the fence up, and then you have either steel wire or aluminum wire, or there are a bunch of different plastic products that have wires woven throughout them, and they're pretty easy to use and they're very visible. Those are very popular. You need to run their wires or the net between the poles and you have to insulate between the poles and the wire. You'll have insulators. Those are usually plastic or ceramic. Your fence is just like any fence that needs to be strong enough to hold itself up.

Then what makes it different with an electric fence is you're connecting what's called an energizer or a shocker or a-- I call it a fencer sometimes. I don't know where that came from or a fence charger. What that does, that makes the high voltage pulse that goes into the fence. You've got your charger-- Another very important component is the ground rod. The charger puts out positive voltage at one terminal, but it needs to have a negative terminal to complete the circuit. You'll have a ground rod, which is just a steel rod or copper rod pounded into the ground, and then you connect the ground terminal to the ground rod.

Then the positive terminal connects to the fence. When an animal touches the fence, the current passes-- start at the center goes to the charger. Goes through the charger, through the wire, through the animal, down through the animal's feet into the ground, back to the ground rod and back to the energizer. That's the complete circuit that the fence forms

Jeff: The shock is in the connection when they touch the wire, obviously with their nose or paw or--

John: Yes. They feel the shock or we feel the shock where we touch it.

Kim: My experience with electric fences and building them is almost zero, but I've spent a lot of time inside electric fences dealing with animals. When I hear electric fence, I think of a half of a tree, a post in the ground so that you couldn't drive a truck through it. They're that tough. From what you're just telling me a thing with a net and a ground wire-- the fences that you're talking about aren't-- what's the word I want, beast proof? The value of them is-- scares the beast as opposed to tries to keep the beast out.

John: Exactly. Most electric fences are not strong enough to hold back any animal. They're using the electricity to deter the animal. Just a single wire can keep a 2000-pound bowl out if it's at a high-enough voltage.

Kim: Where does this voltage come from around my bees, an electric fence out in the middle of nowhere?

John: Okay, you bring up a good point. Your fence energizer needs to be powered by something. You can either plug it into the wall or an extension cord or it can be running off a battery or even better running off a battery that's also being charged by a solar panel. That's very common for us beekeepers, we have bee yards all out and about and they're not usually near a house or near a barn. We make use of a lot of solar energizers. You can get a 12-volt energizer that's just powered by a battery. Then they also make solar energizers that have a built-in solar panel built-in battery, all contained in one unit. Those are very popular.

Kim: A battery sending voltage out every whatever per second. It doesn't have a solar power. How long will just a battery last, do you think?

John: It depends on the battery. There are even units that run off of D cell batteries that'll run for maybe a week or so on D cells. You might be able to get several weeks out of a large battery.

Kim: I don't suppose there's some gizmo gadget on the market that is monitoring this, recognizes that the power off and sends me an email that says, your power's off.

John: You just gave me a new product idea.

[laughter]

John: Not that I know of, but I'm going to look into it. Most of the bear problems we've had at Betterbee, have happened because there's a problem with the fence. Oftentimes the solar panel became disconnected or the battery is just too old and tired and the fence is dead, and then some bear comes along and checks it. I think the bears are smart enough. I think if they hear the fence unit clicking, they usually click with each zap. I think if they hear that, sometimes they won't even try it. If they don't hear that, they're thinking, "Okay, it's lunchtime."

Jeff: Do you choose different fencing materials and post depending on the critter you're trying to keep away from the bees. You wouldn't use a fiberglass rod post for a bear, would you or do you?

John: You can, yes. As long as the fence holds itself up and it's not going to blow down or get pulled down by snow, you can use fiberglass posts for bears. What I like to do is set up a fence, either a net or just a wire or a polyline fence with plastic posts or fiberglass posts, but then add a few steel posts occasionally to reinforce it. What that might look like-- My bee yard here at home is a rectangle and I have six or eight plastic posts that are fairly lightweight, and inexpensive, but the problem with them is they bend over time. The fence puts tension on them, they just lean inwards. In each corner, I have a steel post right next to it that holdsthe post outwards. It can't bend. That makes for a lot more reliable fence.

Kim: Could I put just a log in there, a six-foot post in there pounded into the ground three feet or two or three feet. You couldn't drive a truck over it to use to support the fence. Not part of the system, or I put one of those in each corner.

John: Yes, absolutely. That's a great option, especially for a really permanent setup. If you don't plan to expand or move, that's what you would do.

Kim: I'm guessing that I could sit down maybe and figure out the cost per square foot of this fence and that would tell me-- If I know how much I got to spend, that would tell me how big it's going to have to be, but now next year I want to be able to drive my pickup in there. Is it difficult to expand these and driving my pickup into that fenced area? It's got to be some kind of gate.

John: Yes, a gate is a really good idea. You can do a very simple gate, you can buy an insulated handle and you just have one section of fence that you disconnect at one end and then you set it on the ground and you can walk or drive in. A gate's a good idea. Especially, for pulling honey, you want to be able to get your vehicle as close as you can and not rip the fence down like I did with my truck last year.

Kim: [laughs]

Jeff: Oops, moment.

John: Yes. The fences themselves, if you're using a net, they can be a little pricier than using just wire. Depending on what you're looking to do, if you're trying to keep all sorts of critters out, the nets are great and they're also very quick to set up. If you have a permanent yard and you don't care so much about the smaller animals, if you don't have skunk issues or anything, then installing regular posts with either wire or the polyline is the much less expensive way to go.

Kim: What about cattle? I'm from Wisconsin, Dairy State, we have lots of cows and cows like to scratch on beehives and they're standing next to this fence and they're going, "There, I could scratch my whole left side if I could get through this, I'm going to try it." The shock gets them, but they're so big and so slow that they keep going and it can get through there. Does that happen?

John: I haven't seen that happen, and

I think the cows usually respect the fence, but I'm sure it could happen.

Kim: I've seen a lot of dumb cows in my life. Let me tell you.

[laughter]

Jeff: No offense to any cow listeners. That's Kim's opinion. Is there a different shock value, for lack of better term between a braided product or plastic product of wire conductor versus steel conductor?

John: I think so. Nobody's told me that, but it seems it makes sense that if you touch the plastic wire just right, you might not actually touch a conductor and especially a big furry animal touching that polyline. If they touch it just right, they don't get as much of a shock. I think that's another reason to go with steel or aluminum. Even steel and aluminum, they come in different gauges. My recommendation would be don't go for the cheapest steel wire. It is very flexible, easy to work with, but it'll rust out pretty quickly and it can't handle as much abuse.

Kim: John, going back to where I started on this, I walked into your store and I know I had to buy up something to put up a bare fence around my bees. I asked you if you can help me and you're going to start with some questions. What are some questions that you would have that I haven't already given you information before?

John: The first thing, where is your bee yard and what do you have for power sources nearby? If you have a power source, I would always recommend using it to power your energizer because like I said, the biggest problems we have with bears are caused by failures of our battery, failures of our solar panels. If you've got power, use it. There's a bunch of ways you can do that. You can run power outside to an energizer, have your energizer outside. You could keep the energizer inside and then run the power or the fence lines out to the fence.

Anyway, so that'd be my first question is what do you got for power? If you don't have power, do you have sun? Do you have good solar exposure so you can power a solar energizer? Then I would be asking you how big the area is and what you're trying to keep out. Is it just bears or is it everything? Then we'd talk about nets versus just wire. I would probably ask you, is there already a bear or a critter and is he coming back tonight, because we've set some fences up very rapidly because there was a known bear. That's a key question.

Kim: All right, I could probably give you answers to most of those other than the power source. I was thinking of a half-mile extension cord, but that's probably not going to be very efficient. If I decide that I'm going to go with just solar, I'm guessing I can go from just solar, the size of my shoe to just solar the size of a big old yellow sign or something. Grades of solar power in terms of how good they are, how reliable they are, and how much they put out and how long they last.

John: There are a bunch of energizers with the built-in solar panel and they all tend to be probably less than one square foot of solar panel. I don't know if they tell you how many watts that panel puts out. The different energizers take different amounts of energy. You need a bigger battery for some of the bigger units so that the easiest way is just grab one of those pre-made solar energizers and you're off to the races. You could also build your own unit though and to make it extra powerful get a larger solar panel. You'd get a 15 or 20-watt panel off the internet for not that much money.

Jeff: If you live in the Pacific Northwest, you need a big battery and a big solar panel.

John: That's a good consideration.

Kim: What's the life expectancy of this energizer? I got the big one because I'm worried. What's the life expectancy of that unit?

John: They usually will go for five years or more. You get what you pay for. The real cheap ones do not last that long and you can pay a lot for a really nice 2419one. You can pay for $500 for a really fancy high-powered unit. Those do tend to last a bit longer. Any energizer with a battery in it has a replaceable battery so you can take that battery out, put a new one in, it'll be a sealed lead acid battery. Those might need to be replaced before the rest of the unit is dead.

Kim: If I'm driving out to my bee yard today and I get outside there and I get out of my truck and everything looks normal, I do something that tells me that the fence is working, I touch it or I do something. It looks good today, but it could be gone before I get home that day. There's not a dial that says 20%, 30%, 50% power, is there?

John: Some of them will tell you if the battery is good or not. They'll tell you if your battery is getting tired or if it's fully charged. If it doesn't tell you that, you can always check the voltage with a volt meter. If you want, we can talk about fence testing a little bit.

Jeff: Fence testing besides sending your partner out to grab a hold of it, would probably-- It's frowned upon.

John: That's frowned upon especially with a powerful unit. If a smaller unit, you can get away with it, but--

Jeff: It's a lot of fun.

John: Oh, yes. Probably my dad taught me, you test it with the back of your hand because when your hand touches the wire it tends to clench up and you don't want to grab the wire when you get shocked. Test it with the back of your hand. Even better, if you want, you can take a blade of grass and hold it and touch the fence, and then you'll get a reduced shock through the grass depending on how wet it is. The right way to test a fence is with a fence tester. That's just essentially a really high-voltage volt meter that measures the voltage of the pulse as it comes out. There are digital ones, there are analog ones, but they tell you what the voltage is at each pulse. To do that, most of them, they have electrode that plugs into the ground and then you touch the other electrode to the fence itself. It'll tell you is the fence putting out 2000 volts, 6,000 volts, 10,000 volts, whatever the case may be.

Jeff: We're talking about snapper-type electric fences. Do they still make the constant-charge or constant-current chargers electric fences?

John: Not that I know of. I've never come across one. I've heard they use them at prisons, but I have not seen them for animals.

Jeff: I knew of them around cattle. Maybe because this particular farm the cattle disrespected the snapper, but I didn't know if they were effective for-- Since we're leading up to bears, whether those are still on the market.

John: I haven't seen one. I actually went looking for one, but maybe they've gone out of style or maybe somebody decided they're not safe. I'm not sure.

Jeff: The solar configuration for constant current would probably be higher requirements for a constant current charger.

John: Seems like it might be.

Jeff: Testing of the fence back of the hand is a good thing. Sending your buddy out to test it is always the preferred option. A blade of grass or the tester itself is good to have.

John: There're some other ways too. You can take a screwdriver and very carefully hold the plastic handle of the screwdriver and then touch it to one terminal of the energizer and then gradually bring the screwdriver closer to the other terminal and you can actually see an arc between the terminal and the screwdriver. Probably not something you want to try if you're not comfortable getting shocked.

Jeff: [laughs] We're talking about beekeepers, so they're used to getting stung but being snapped by an electric fence is always startling, I find.

John: I'd rather be stung. I cannot stand getting shocked.

Kim: Quick question, John. Going back to the volt meter that you were talking about and the equipments that you're using in that fence, you said 5,000, 10,000, whatever watts are going through there and you put your volt meter on there and test that. If it's supposed to be 10,000 and it only shows 4,000, does that happen, does it deteriorate over time or does it go 10,000, 10,000, 0.

John: It usually deteriorates and there are a few different things that could be going on. One is if there's a bunch of vegetation touching your fence, that could be grounding it out and conducting the energy away from the other parts of the fence. That'll be something that will cause the voltage to drop. The energizers themselves can wear out and I don't know exactly which component it is that's failing. It might be the transformer or the capacitors that are getting tired and that can result in a lower voltage. There can also be a low power supply voltage, so if your battery is tired, the output of the fence will be low as well. Checking a fence for vegetation that's probably the most labor-intensive part of all this electric fence talk is keeping the vegetation off so that it doesn't spoil your voltage and decrease its--

Kim: Keep your weed whacker in the cab.

John: Yes. I should mention that that's one big difference between the netting and the wires is with wires you can just take the weed whacker and go to town cutting grass underneath the wire, but with the netting you need to either basically take the net down and weed whack or very carefully trim along the fence because you'll cut into it pretty easily.

Jeff: We're talking about testing and I just need to tell this story. I think of this all the time.

When I was a paramedic, we had an ER nurse tell us about an old timer that she had in the ER and he lived out on a farm and when he was starting to feel poorly, he would go out and pee on the electric fence and shock and then he'd feel better and what they'd figured out was that he was having arrhythmias and that little bit of a jolt was getting them out of Atrial fib and bringing them back around and making them feel better again. There's medicinal uses for electric fences too. It always amazes me.

John: Wow.

[laughter]

Jeff: That's a tough way to take a shock, but it made them feel better.

Kim: I want to see you write a prescription for that, Jeff.

Jeff: [laughs] Well, on that note, I think this is a good time to take a quick break and we'll be right back.

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Jeff: All right, so we've been talking about maintaining the electric fence and requirement or the need to keep the vegetation, the grass, the branches, whatever off the fence to make sure it's receiving full power. What are some of the other problems we might experience if we think the output of the charger is not as what it should be?

John: There are a few things you'd want to check and I guess we should clarify-- Let's just say the fence is not giving a good shock. We don't know what the cause is so we'd want to take a look at every component of the fence really, and try to find, is it an electrical issue, is it just a mechanical issue, a wire that's disconnected? One common problem is a lack of a good ground. You might have your energizer set up your fence set up, but you need to have good grounding, or else the circuit doesn't get completed.

You want to check to make sure your ground wire is connected. Make sure your connections are not rusted so that continuity is messed up. There's also the chance you'll need more than one ground rod. In really dry soil, you might want to use multiple ground rods. Also for a very powerful fence, you may want a longer ground rod or more ground rods. It's not unusual to have multiple six-foot-long ground rods for a really big powerful fence. For our bee yards, we're usually using just one three-foot ground rod and that's sufficient.

You should look first making sure that the fence itself is not grounded out so that there's vegetation that can do that. We could also have a broken insulator or a branch leaning on the fence. If it's making good continuity with that vegetation or with that fence post, it's just sucking all the energy out of the fence. If you're not grounding out on vegetation, you're ground rod is good and you're still not getting a good shock at the fence. If it's a battery-powered unit, I would check your battery voltage.

To do that you need a DC volt meter. You’re check you're looking for-- if it's a 12-volt battery, you want to see 12 volts or 13 volts. If you're seeing 11 volts or 10 volts, that's telling you that your solar panel's not keeping up or maybe the battery is just old and weak and needs to be replaced. Say you have good voltage and you're still not getting a shock, are you getting some sort of indication from the energizer that the thing is actually shocking? Usually, there's an audible click and sometimes there's a blinking light.

I know on most of the units I've used the sound of the click is a fairly good indicator. If you hear of a real good snap, usually it will be putting out a good spark. Not always. I've had one recently that had a very healthy click to it and it did absolutely nothing. I haven't fixed that one yet. Those are the main things to check.

Jeff: I've had electric fences where I have the current, I can get shocked or I can see the snap and one section of the fence go to another section of fence and it's not there. At that point, there's a break somewhere in the line. Often for me, I found that's either where it's been buried and someone's inadvertently dug it up like a farmer or something has hit the conductor, or like you said, it's come off a insulator and it's grounding out somewhere, but it can be hot in one section of the fence and not on the other.

Jeff: I've had that problem with the polyline fences before and that's-- the polyline, it looks like string, but it just has little wires woven throughout it and I think what they tell you to do is when you're connecting it, you don't just tie a knot because there's not-good-enough contact between the wires so you either need to tie several knots or what I like to do is take out the wires, separate the wires out from the plastic of the string and twist them together very well.

If they're arcing-- I've seen this too, if you tie two polylines together, there'll be small arcs happening and they'll erode through the metal and after a year or something it's totally disconnected and then half your fence is dead.

Kim: This is actually getting more complicated than I thought it would get because like I said, I grew up in Wisconsin with electric fences, three wires on wooden posts. That's all we had to worry about. This is getting all the things that can go wrong, the minor things, the little things that can just erode as opposed to stop and I would guess that would lend me to tell anybody who's going to use these that pay attention always every time you go out there.

John: Yes. Kim, we should go back to your bear problem. Your yard, we're setting up here. We got to talk about training the bear. That's the best part.

Jeff: Training the bear. This sounds like a circus. Sorry. This sounds like fun.

John: [chuckles] Yes, I don't know how much this actually helps, but it is fun and it seems like it's a good idea. When you put the electric fence up, Ideally the bear will get a nice good shock the first time and then he never comes back or she, but if the bear is touching the fence with its fur, it might not get the best shock the first time. You'd rather the bear get a nice shock in its wet nose, so that's a good reason to train the bear. To do that, there are a bunch of things you could do, but one idea is take a tuna fish can and tie it to the fence, tie a few of them to the fence and the bear will be intrigued by that tuna smell and will come up and sniff it and get a great shock right to the nose.

It seems unfair, but we also have done that with strips of bacon. Just take a paperclip and attach bacon to the fence in a few places. The bear will get a nice shock when he tries to eat the bacon.

Jeff: I'm not joking, but is it fried or the raw bacon? It sounds like a silly question but I don't know.

John: I think you could do either. I don't think the bears are that picky.

Jeff: One second here. Well, we're training the bear. How tall is a fence for a bear?

John: I think about four feet is good enough, three and a half to four feet.

Jeff: For a black bear, Eastern black bear.

John: For a black bear. Apparently grizzly bears, or sorry brown bears like beehives as well. We're more concerned with black bears in our neck of the woods and I think the whole country has the same problem with black bears, but brown bears are a problem as well.

Jeff: You're saying it's better to train the bear before they get used to the honey and the grubs and one of the ways is to basically lure them in to get shocked in a controlled way with a bacon or a can, a tuna or something that attracts the bear. What do you do if the bear is already zoning in on your hives besides moving your yard?

John: If the bear is already a problem-- and this is the problem that we were having with my father's queen mating yard. This bear kept coming back night after night and he has a very, very powerful fence set up four wires and no holes in the fence, no electrical issues and we eventually got the bear on video just walking through the fence. He just ignored it but if you know you have a bear problem, things you can do to make the fence better would be adding more wires or making the fence taller.

Just make it a little bit more difficult for the bear to get through getting a bigger energizer. We didn't really talk that much about that yet. Energizers are rated in joules, which is the measurement of the energy they put out and you can't very easily compare between different manufacturers. They don't all measure them the same, but getting one that's bigger would be recommended. At least a half joule I think is good for bears. You go up to a one-joule fence.

They also rate them in miles of fence that they supposedly can power but I'm very skeptical they might tell you that a unit can do 30 miles of fence and that makes me confident. "Okay, my 200 yards it should be able to do. They're very optimistic.”

Jeff: Even if it said 30 miles, you'd have to consider, "Well, I'm running four strands or three strands so each one of those counts as a mile or whatever."

John: Yes, you'd have to divide by the number of strands, but really what matters more than length is how much it's touching grass. If you have a huge fence and you're not going to mow it every week, it's always going to have something touching it. That really decreases the power. A strong fence will actually burn through the grass. It'll clear itself off. Not usually the smaller units that we're using for our bee yards though.

Jeff: If you've got a tough bear, then more strands more powerful unit or last resort, move the bee yard.

John: Another thing, if you can't move the bees, make sure that beehives are strapped. Oftentimes the bear will knock over the hives but not actually get into it that far because if you strap the hive well enough it stays together. This problem bear, he was actually ripping off one side of the hive body and taking frames out from the side or taking chunks of frame out, frames out from the side. Other times we've had bears knock over strapped hives and I don't know if the bees start stinging them at that point, but they'll give up and walk away.

Jeff: I'm just thinking about styrofoam hives, it probably-- if you have bears, probably a wooden hive is still the way to go.

John: Yes, sometimes the polystyrene can crack when the bear knocks it over. We had a hive that wasn't inside a fence and a bear got into it and then we still didn't have a chance to move it or put a fence around it the next day. I was like, "You know what, I'm at least going to get a video of this." I strapped the hive, set up a video camera and then somebody else was checking on that hive the same day at about--, maybe it was 8:30 at night. This was in June. They checked the hive, walked away at 8:45, the bear came out of the woods and knocked the hive over.

Jeff: Do you still have that video?

John: I have that video. That bear was just sitting in the woods waiting for the inspection to be done and all clear to go check it out.

Jeff: You don't have that up on YouTube, do you?

John: No, but I could.

Jeff: If you do, we'll put the link to it in the show notes.

John: Yes, that'd be cool.

Kim: John, you were saying about training bears, put something on the fence, peanut butter or bacon or whatever, bear comes up goes to lick it off and gets appropriately rewarded and leaves and never comes back. I don't know enough about bear biology, but will there be another bear in a week and another bear after that in a week and another bear after that in a week that haven't been trained?

John: I don't know. I don't think the bears overlap quite that much in their territory. I think they have sort of their own separate areas, but I'm not really sure. I heard somewhere about a bear recently that they had to remove from a city. The bear was just going house to house repeatedly getting into everyone's garbage and they just had to tranquilize it and move it.

Jeff: I used to have horses and one of the things that we used to-- I was told about fences and horses, if they get up to their shoulders under a fence and they get snapped on top of their shoulders or behind it, they're going to go forward. If they get snapped on their nose or in their head, they're going to go backwards. I imagine that would be much the same with the bears. That's the rationale with more fencing is that they get snapped before they get their big broad shoulders through the fence and power through it.

John: I think so. I think that's why you want them to get a shock to the face to try to keep them out. That's another reason too, that some people will electrify barbed wire and that's-- It might work okay. You also have a chance of some animal getting stuck in it and they're getting shocked and they're stuck in the barbs and that's a little inhumane.

Jeff: John, is there anything we haven't asked you about that you want to mention?

John: That's about all I can think of there. I could talk about fences for a long time, but nothing else is coming to mind right now.

Jeff: If anybody had any specific questions they can either write to you, here at Beekeeping Today podcast or I suppose they could probably find you at Betterbee.

John: Yes, reach out to us at Better Be, we're happy to answer questions. We have a fence kit too. We try to make it a little easier. That just has a net and a few fence energizer options and ground rods, so it takes a little bit of the confusion out of it if you've never worked with the fence before.

Jeff: Well, John, thanks for joining us today talking to us about electric fences and I look forward to having you back. Thank you.

John: All right, thanks for having me guys.

Kim: It was good talking, John. Take care and thanks for all the information about bear that I did not want to know.

Jeff: I fortunately don't have to worry about bears in this part of the country where I live or at least in this part of the county where I live. I know that there's serious problem for a lot of beekeepers.

Kim: Interesting thing that's going on in my part of Ohio at least, is that I've been told is that when they catch a bear in Pennsylvania, they box him up, take him to the border and let him go into

Jeff: [laughs] Come on. Is that true?

Kim: I heard it somewhere at a bee meeting. What can I tell you [laughs]?

Jeff: Well, then it must be true [laughs]

Kim: It is. This was good background on the bear biology and a background on the electronics of the bear fence, the variations that exist. I learned a lot today because I, what I know about electric fences, they're keeping cows out.

Jeff: It's pretty much the same. The difference is that the cow, you had a barn nearby you could plug the charger or the energizer in the bee yard. You're now dealing with batteries and solar units. If you need them, they're there available for you and it'll save you some money and save you headaches and save your bees.

Kim: There you go. Good.

Jeff: That about wraps it up for this episode. Before we go, I want to encourage our listeners to rate us five stars on Apple Podcast or wherever you download and stream the show. Even better, write a review and let other beekeepers looking for a new podcast know what you like. You can get there directly from our website by clicking on the reviews along the top of any webpage. We want to thank our regular episode sponsors Global Patties, strong microbials and especially Betterbee for their longtime support of this podcast. Thanks to Northern Bee Books for their generous support.

Finally, and most importantly, we want to thank you the Beekeeping Today podcast listener for joining us on this show. Feel free to leave us questions or comments at leave-a-comment section under each episode on the website. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks a lot everybody.