Actually small four legged critters are pretty easy to deal with, it is no harder to keep them out of the hives than it is to keep them out of your garbage - maybe easier… I know we have skunks and possums in our neighborhood, as I’ve seen them… Never had a problem with the hives, though we are in fairly woodsy suburban country.  I haven’t seen any coons, but would be surprised if there weren’t any.  OTOH, Bears are a real problem, which can be dealt with, but are much harder to stop…

Possums and coons are stopped by the “heavy weight on the lid” if needed, and skunks are stopped by simply putting the hive on a stand so that the landing board is 18-24” off the ground - this makes the skunk have to stand up on his hind legs to try and raid the hive (they are more into the bees than the honey BTW) - exposing his sensitive belly to the guard bees… This also helps discourage other small critters as well.  Some folks also find it useful to put down a few scraps of carpet tack strip on the front of the landing board - doesn’t bother the bees, but sure causes other critters to keep the paws off…

Bears are more of a problem, as it pretty much takes a physical barricade to stop them, and they are strong enough to get past most barriers… Some folks claim that motion activated lights / noisemakers can work, or an electric fence, but there are also lots of reports of them failing.  One of the better approaches I’ve heard of is to sink a couple of telephone poles in the ground, and create a platform overhanging them about 8-10’ up, gaining access with either a ladder or one of those pull down attic stairs. The bears can’t climb up because of the overhang, and the bees like being up higher anyway…

I don’t actually eat much straight honey - I’m on a low carb lifestyle, so it just doesn’t fit - however I’m a serious mead maker, with typically 60-80 gallons in various stages of fermentation at any given time… Good mead is very hard to come by commercially - most is over-sweet, and tends to be poorly made… I can make anything from very dry to desert sweet, with an almost infinite array of flavors (I actually don’t make much “simple” mead) and so forth - from plain simple mead (Honey, water and yeast) to a variety of fruit meads including apple, raspberry/blackberry, sweet cherry, grape, etc. to herbal blends, and my “Firewater blend” Habenero pepper and Ginger mead that will really knock you over…

(Mead making is actually what got me into keeping bees - I started brewing and my honey supplier convinced me that I would be better off growing my own...)

Gooserider

bald faced hornets   the nastiest mothers I have ever run in to. They’re the ones that make those big grey ball nests you see hanging from trees. this time of year the yellow jackets are everywhere.

Last summer I saw what claimed to be the world’s largest glass beehive in Fort St. John, British Columbia.  It was a large rectangle about four feet tall, three feet wide and 10 inches thick.  The large faces were glass and the sides were metal with hinges to open it.  It had three colonies inside with separate tubes to outside.  They admitted the hive was a bit warm in the winter since it was inside but being able to see bees inside was neat, they also had honey on tap!  If you ever find yourself on the Alaska highway a fun place to stop if a bit hard to find (I missed it twice).

Kevin.

I agree, observation hives are cool!  They tend to be a bit hard on the bees - there really isn’t enough room in one for a healthy colony that lasts very long, and they take a good bit of maintainance (the bees don’t like the light, so they tend to goop over the glass)

The Boston Museum of Science used to have one, I don’t know if it still does, but it never seemed to be working right when I saw it. 

The best one I’ve ever seen was at the Monfiore (sp?) museum about half way up the east side of VT - very nice place with lots of really well designed exhibits that worked well, and were fun to interact with… The science tended to be pitched at an elementary school level, but it was well done and covered quite a bit of material with different level explanations…

The observation hive was probably about 3 feet on a side, one layer of comb thick, and had a nice healthy population when I saw it, with all stages of brood and nectar processing present - If I’d seen that sort of presence in one of my hives I’d have been really happy.  While it was fun to look at, I had seen most of what was in the hive without the glass, except for one thing that a beekeeper normally never sees because he gets everyone upset when he goes into a hive… They had several bees in the hive that were actually doing the “waggle dance” that is used to communicate to other bees where the nectar sources are… It is something all the bee books talk about, but that I’d never seen live… It was incredibly neat to see that the bees really did do the dance, and in just the way the book described.

The other thing that was cool about it is that they had the hive set up on the second floor, with the entrance through a pipe in the wall, right above an outside area that was a combination picnic and fluid mechanics experiment area - you could watch the exit from many different areas and see some of the flight patterns - but the people on the ground were mostly oblivious to the air traffic passing overhead. 

Nice museum if you are in the area, well worth the admission.

Gooserider