Bears Vandalize Local Beekeepers' Hives Across Rockland

by M.C. Millman 

Bears have been a problem for years in Rockland County, but the problem is only getting worse for local beekeepers. 

On Thursday, September 29,  bears struck not once but twice in the same location. 

"We store our frames after we spin our honey," Zev Oster, owner of Rockland Honey and West Maple Farms, tells Rockland Daily. "So we put them in a shed with some boxes at West Maple Farm for the winter. The next day, I saw boxes and trays outside the shed. At first, I thought maybe a worker forgot to put all the frames inside the shed."

Attracted to the residual honey and pollen that still clung to the trays even after being spun out for honey was enough to bring the bear to exercise some extreme measures to get inside. 

"I went over to investigate," Oster continues,  "and I saw that the whole door had been ripped off from the shed by its hinges. We started stacking up the boxes and trays to move to a new location and then left. A few minutes later, someone at the farm told us two bears were back. They had already knocked over the stacks and were eating the frames again before we chased them back into the woods."

Being that he had an electric fence in storage from a previous location, Oster was able to install that around the perimeter of the shed to protect what was left of the boxes and frames. 

"A beekeeper in Wesley Hills told me he lost both of his hives to bears as well," Oster shared.

"Every year, we get hit by the bears," Oster says. " In 2019, a bear got lots of our hives. Unfortunately, bears do a lot of damage. I have a double electric fence around the hives at West Maple Farms, but even so,  if the battery goes weak or dies, or if a branch falls across it, or the wind knocks it down, a bear can definitely cause a lot of destruction."

Shed with new electric fence