There’s a bird camping next to the beehive entrance. It steals forager bees when they come out, runs off, then comes back and steals another one.
And here I was going to put a hive next to my house too, since I have wasps. Bees are rather docile, but territorial: they’ll attack wasps. Wasps are also idiots and will try to invade the hive to steal honey. Lavender and peppermint fields will give my bees stuff to protect… but will birds start nesting in my trees and stealing all my bees too?
Every time I think I’ve bent nature to my will, something eats it.
There are tens of thousands of bees in your hive and a healthy queen will produce new brood all summer, well into the fall. The few bees birds could take is not a lot in the grand scheme of things. Its the mites that you can’t see that are the real problem.
+1 - I live in the middle of the woods, but I have a barred owl, a family of hawks, and a fox den in the area. I’ve never had an issue with pests in the garden smaller than a turkey or deer.
Oh yes definitely bats… And forgot about the red squirrels that clean my pecan tree. Any racoons will be near the watercourses and dumpsters. Destructive bastids. I’ve yet to see a skunk around slab construction- they live in the older part of town.
The bats we encourage. We have a house for them so they eat mosquitos and we use the little bit of guano. We have hawks and owls but they don’t seem to discourage the chipmunks that have been casing our garden. The chipmunks wouldn’t be such a problem if not for a penchant of taking one bite out of ten tomatoes instead of just eating one tomato. Our old dog used to keep the varmints away but not our boxer. I had to put an electric fence around the bees because of all the bears.
Although I prefer not to harm the critters, if something like that actually worked I would use it as a last resort. The thing is, as you point out, it doesn’t work. I’m usually looking for effective repellents. I’m thinking if I hear of someone getting rid of a barn cat that I might see if I could get one to live in one of our sheds.
Mine works fine. It is a spring driven, single shot rifle, not CO2. Just a cheap little Gamo but it works really well. Almost the same muzzle velocity but only half the projectile of a .22LR. If you can hit your target, they don’t suffer.
