In this short Bite‑Sized Bees video, Laurence Edwards visits the River Apiary to document damage that badgers have inflicted on a polystyrene (and potentially wooden) beehive. He explains that a landowner observed badgers sniffing around the hive at night, and the visible damage—scraped paint, broken polystyrene, moldy marks—appears to be several months old. Edwards hypothesizes that a badger attempted to enter the hive entrance, was startled by the bees, and retreated, leaving the damage. He notes that badgers can quickly shred empty polystyrene hives and also damage wooden ones, especially if they are after honey. To verify the culprit, he plans to install a trail camera for weeks to capture images. The video’s purpose is to show beekeepers what badger‑related hive damage looks like so they can recognize it and take appropriate mitigation steps.
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Today I'm going to show you the damage that badgers can do to polyhives. So we're down at the River Apiary today. Very rarely come down to this apiary to shoot any videos, so I thought I'd come down here, shoot a few videos, see what's going on with the bees, and keep you guys updated. So in this video, it's going to be a really short video, part of our Bite-Sized Bees series. Just going to show you the damage that badgers can do to polyhives. Now I know it's badgers that have done this damage because I've had a sighting from the landowner saying that she's seen badgers sniffing around the hive late in the evening when she's been walking her dogs. I'm going to set up a cam, a trail cam, to try and get some images, but it's probably going to take me a few weeks to do that. I think these marks of damage were a good few months old, got a bit of mold and mildew growing in them, so they're not fresh damage. But we'll see what the camera picks up and maybe we can get some images of some badgers. I just wanted to do this video though, just to show you what the damage looks like, because then if you've got damage on your own hives, whether wooden or poly hives, you can make the necessary arrangements to try and resolve that issue. So this is the hive here in question. I'll flash up a little picture there. It's quite easy to see the damage that's been done. The badgers clearly scraped through all of the paintwork and they're trying to get into that entrance. Now what I think's happened is the badger's trying to get into the entrance and all of a sudden all of the bees have come out and they've scared the badger off. That's what I think's happened because a badger would rip through polystyrene within a matter of minutes if there were no bees inside. They can do a huge, huge amount of damage to polystyrene beehives. They can do a huge amount of damage to wooden beehives as well. But I know personally polystyrene beehives, if there's no bees in them and there's something nice and tasty for a badger to get in and eat, they will rip them to shreds and they'll rip them to shreds so much that there's literally nothing left. So that's pretty much it for the video. Like I said, I'm going to pop a trail cam up there. We'll try and get some pictures of them. I'll update you on a later video. But I just wanted to show you the kind of issues that we have to deal with at the moment. Badgers trying to get into the hives and steal the bees' honey. Hopefully though, these guys saw that badger off and he's not going to return and pester the colonies anymore.
