Twice in the past week we have awoken early in the morning to the smell of a skunk around the house. I'm pretty sure it was messing with the bees since the smell seems to originate from the yard near the hives.

Skunks, along with raccoons and other animals like to scratch on the front of the hives. When guard bees come out to investigate, the animal eat them. Then the animal continue to scratch until more bees come out to investigate, and they eat those bees too.

One easy way to help alleviate the problem is to have your hive on a stand several inches off of the ground. This requires the animal to stand on it's back legs in order to reach the hive, exposing the softer underside of their belly. This way, when guard bees come out to sting the animal, they have a very broad, easy target of soft tissue.

My hives are already on stands, and I don't see any evidence of scratch marks, but I thought it would be fun to deploy my deer camera and see what shows up on film in a couple of days.



In the picture above, you can see the hives to the right, the bucket of fresh water on the ground in the middle, and the trail camera at ground level to the left.

The red wires you see run up the tree a little ways to a small solar panel I have which helps recharge the camera battery so it stays powered up almost indefinitely.

If anything interesting shows up on the camera, I'll post the pictures!