Sometimes the beekeeping gods deal you a 7-2 off. Your neighbor is just a plain jerk. Your house sits across from a DOW chemical plant. Or, rednecks like to shoot double ought buck shot into your hives during the opening day of hunting season. Whatever the case may be, the ancient call still permeates within you to keep bees no matter what the consequences.
Sometimes this requires you to open up the Beekeeper’s Guerrilla Guide to Keeping Bees. When the deck is stacked against you, you either have to bend like the reed and work with the problem or begin RC modeling in place of apiculture.
Chapter 1 of the GGtKB states that when operating in the “bush”, evasion is your first line of defense. This is because you can never always be with your hives. At some point you will have to go home to your family for dinner and a bath and your hives will have to fend for themselves. How they fare depends on how much preparation you have put into your evasion methodology. This can be broken down into several aspects.
- Where are your hives situated? Hives sitting right out in the open no more than 30 feet off the road is liking taping a “KICK ME” sign on the front of it. As the saying goes, “out of sight, out of mind.” If you can see it from your driveway, so can Bubba with his lifted pickup truck with 50 inch mudders. Move your hives behind an object that removes it from the view-shed of the road. Behind your house is a good place to start if you have a large enough property to work with.
- If not than you will need to improvise. Go to your local gardening store and buy some shrubbery and create a hedge line separating the hives from the view of the road. Remember to get plants that are tall enough and will grow thick enough to block the view. This also has the added benefit of creating a wind break to shield your hives from the cold winds of winter.
- Paint your hives something other than a bright white. Try to use light or pastel colored greens. Don’t use dark paints especially if your hives encounter a lot of direct sun for they will be more likely to overheat. The lighter pastel tones will still be noticeable but not as much as white. Plus in combination with with shrubbery, the effect will be improved.
- If you are a carpenter, build your own hive boxes that don’t look live beehives. Be sure to build your hive box using dimensions in accordance to the principals of Bee Space. This website actually sells bee hives that don’t look exactly like beehives. Hide Hives
- When you are working out in the field maybe wear something other than a pure white jump suit. This guy here might have the right idea.
- Back in the 80’s there were plenty of army/navy surplus stores. If you are lucky enough you may still find camouflage netting. Used traditionally to drape over tanks or half-tracks to hide them from the enemy, these can be used to cover the public facing side of your apiary provided they are all clustered together.
- Build a trellis wall around your hives and plant nice plants with it. To anyone driving by they will initially think what a beautiful bit of landscaping they are seeing rather than destroying your hives.
- Lastly, Punji traps. Stagger the holes surrounding your apiary in a carefully laid out random pattern. Inside place sharpened bamboo spears for your trespassers to impale themselves on. If you have access to poison frogs, carefully wipe the spear tips along the frogs skin a few times. Be sure to map out your locations so your friends and family don’t fall in. JUST KIDDING.
These are just a few things you can do to improve the surviability of your bee hives. We will have to leave bears to another article.
Guerrilla beekeeping involves knowing your enemy and how they think. It is sad that there are people out there who have nothing better to do than tipping over beehives but it is a fact we have to deal with.
