Horrors!! Raccoon pushed over my hive last night

[AliciaH]

Sorry to hear about your hive!  How awful!  Glad they're okay now, though.

Some additional thoughts on the fence:  I use an electric fence with a solar charger because my apiary is in my cow field.  If your beeyard is anywhere that grass or weeds grow rampant, then you are taking on another set of maintenance chores that you may or may not have time for.  Some hot boxes throw out enough of a charge to burn the grass or weeds as they come into contact with the wire, but during moister times of the year, it can still overwhelm a fence.  It's hard to mow around and if you like tidy beeyards, you end up weedwacking, too.  Just a thought.

Having said that, if maintenance isn't an issue, then the fence works great 'cause raccoons are so tactile!  We use hot wire around our chicken coop to keep the raccoons out and so far so good.

Live traps are awesome, maybe a neighbor has one you could try before investing in one?  And, I love the tiedown idea (you've already got the heavy bricks to tie to).  If the hive goes over again, you know it's something bigger.

[annette]

In reply to all the posts, and I do appreciate each and every one of them.

I did not mention that this was a very light hive. 2 medium supers with 2 regular bricks sitting on top stuck to a heavy hive stand. a small hive I have been babying along with hardly any honey in it which makes it even lighter. I had been feeding this hive sugar syrup which might have attracted that animal as well.

The raccoon that was seen down the road shortly after was very large. We do have extremely large raccoons out this way.
I have never had any problems with the raccoons in all the time here and they are all over the place.

My husband is going to help me right now and remove those heavy concrete stones, until I come up with some other solution. I am leaning towards the tie downs you all have mentioned with ties around the hives.

This was definitely not done by a person. My hives are in a very secluded area and also those honey frames were eaten out and left in the dirt.

The hives are looking really good right now and no disturbance since this incident.

I thank you all for all the good information. I am going to print out this topic and keep all this information, especially all the research you all did on the tie downs and the solar electric fences.

Any more disturbance and I am going with the electric fence. Alicia those are good points about the fence, but here things dry up like a desert, so once I mow and weedwack, then nothing grows until winter.

Although I am going to look into trapping that coon since I have not had any problems in 5 years. I am leaving on vacation next week so trapping will have to wait until I return. But I will call Animal Control on Monday and find out about picking up a trap for that purpose.

Thanks again for the encouragement and support.

Sincerely
Annette

[Kathyp]

the county may have a trapper for nuisance animals.  they'll come out and set the thing and pick it up when it's full.  if not, look into renting one.  check with the feed stores, etc.

[annette]

The more I think about all this, the more I am leaning towards trapping the animal. This feels like the right thing to do, since I have not had any disturbances to my hives until this happened.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Annette

[bee-nuts]

I found the portable pet stakes which work pretty awesome for there original purpose too unless you have a relentless yanking dog.  They are pretty cheap so you may want to consider these.

http://www.nextag.com/Chains-Leashes--zzscrew+in+ground+stakesz2702013zB6z5---html

http://www.nextag.com/PETCO--2702013/dog-tie-out/brand-html