Robbing

yoyo · Post by **yoyo** » Fri Jul 27, 2007 5:30 am

I think Wally hit on the key point without me realizing it. After our county bee meeting last night and talking with the other people there. I heard the same thing again and again. My conclusion is, and I hope the bees were listening and agree, is that the bees need to be actively bringing back stores for the hive, pollen ,nectar, whatever as Wally stated "in a honey flow". The bees carrying a load of stores are welcome in the hive. The bees that came home with nothing were not welcome and were treated like robbers. I guess it's like crashing a covered dish party and not bringing anything!
Thanks Wally, just speak a little louder next time so I'll get the point!

Locust&Honey · Post by **Locust&Honey** » Fri Jul 27, 2007 2:39 pm

So did you move your hives apart and all is well???

yoyo · Post by **yoyo** » Sat Jul 28, 2007 5:49 am

I just swapped the hives, did not move the blocks they were on to another place. After the first three days, no more dead bees. I put a new caged queen in there Thursday AM. I will check on her this morning and hopefully she is released, If not I will wait one more day and release her. NOW, I worry that because there is a brand new medium super on top and the caged queen is in between those new frames and not down in the deep brood box, that she will be killed also, but that will be part two of this lesson. I hope all will be well.

Locust&Honey · Post by **Locust&Honey** » Sat Jul 28, 2007 7:24 am

Your suppose to leave the queen alone for atleast 7 days. I made the mistake to check on her after 3 days one time and lost her. I would wait 7 days. I have done two since the failed attempt and had success with them both. As far as the placing of the queen, I don't think it will matter too much. The one thing that might happen is they not attend to her like they should. But I think she will be alright. I would wait though!!

yoyo · Post by **yoyo** » Sat Jul 28, 2007 11:14 am

I just checked on her and they are about 3/4 of the way thru the candy. The cage is rapped up with bees that look like they are trying to feed her, but most of the bees are down in the deep. I will let the bees release her as they most likely will have it done by tomorow anyway.
The weak swarm hive is now looking strong. They are coming and going like crazy and just about every bee returning is loaded with pollen.
I wonder if poutting a branch or something is front of the hives making them re-orient would have helped? probably not.

Locust&Honey · Post by **Locust&Honey** » Sat Jul 28, 2007 12:40 pm

I wouldn't think so but it is a VERY interesting thought!!!

yoyo · Post by **yoyo** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 7:58 pm

I think they released the queen sometime last night as she was not in the cage this morning. All seems well , but not much traffic coming and going.

Post by **Wally** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 10:26 pm

I'm thinking you are checking them way too often. Many new queens are balled when disturbed before they begin laying. I agree with L&H on the seven day wait.

Post by **Jacobs** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 7:39 pm

Just an update--I still have the entrance reducer on my weaker hive, at the larger opening. It appears to have rallied and defends against the periodic robber. The stronger hive has no entrance reducer and seems to be doing fine. It filled the 2nd medium super with sugar water honey and is working a 3rd medium. I have been feeding both hives sugar water regularly and today was the first time the feeders were not empty (after about 4 days). For the last two days (after the drop from 100 degree days) both hives have had bees coming in loaded with pollen, more than I have seen since Spring. Is there something producing significant nectar and pollen now?

Post by **Wally** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 7:52 pm

Goldenrod is starting to bloom and there are a few others i cannot name. GR is a good pollen producer.

Locust&Honey · Post by **Locust&Honey** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 8:18 pm

What does it look like???

Post by **Jacobs** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 10:08 am

The adventure continues. I put a new queen in my weak hive on Monday afternoon. Multiple eggs in many cells and over pollen and all over the place convinced me I had laying worker. At the meeting last night Jack and others told me get the queen out before the laying workers/hive killed her. They suggested I take all the bees a distance away from the hive location and shake them off. The idea of this is that the foragers will fly back and the laying workers will be too heavy to fly back to the hive. I then wait two days and place the new queen back in the hive. That part went well this morning. The queen had not been released or killed but 3 of her 5 attendents are dead.

The real problem is that even doing this early this morning, by the time I had it finished it caused massive robbing at both of my hives. I have them both closed with entrance reducers with the opening plugged. I'll let you know what things look like this evening when I get home.

It's always something.

Kurt Bower · Post by **Kurt Bower** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 4:32 am

If you pull the queen you will have to add fresh attendants.
If you do not the old attendants will soon die and the queen will soon follow.
Good luck on ridding yourself of the laying workers.

Kurt

Post by **Jacobs** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 10:23 am

It's probably too late for that now. I put the queen back in yesterday morning. Two of the five attendents were already dead. I put the cage near the hive before I put it in to see the reaction of the workers. Two came to the cage and did not appear at all hostile. They stayed with the cage when I walked away with it to store it while I opened the hive. I did enlarge the hole in the candy some before I put the cage back in.

It appears that the landing path of the foragers has altered. In the week or so before the new queen I noticed that the bees seemed to hover and drift side to side at the entrance before landing and going in. Now they seem to be landing directly at the entrance and going right it. Hopefully this is in response to the new queen and hopefully I haven't killed her.

Post by **Jacobs** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 7:06 am

I did a quick check of the hive Sunday afternoon and the queen had been released. I did not see her but saw what looked like single, well positioned eggs on the deep foundation next to the comb. Time will tell.

Kurt Bower · Post by **Kurt Bower** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 3:55 am

Sounds like a winner!

Post by **Jacobs** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 5:28 pm

A thorough inspection yesterday around 5:00p.m. was pretty grim. I did not see the queen. There was what looked like lots of open brood with very scattered capped drone brood and dead brood (not stinky and not ropy). It looked like there were some small areas of capped non-drone brood, but I am not sure of the age or viability. Wax moths had gotten into the deep super (brood area) and had done some damage. I removed 3-4 of their larvae and hope I got them all. By the time I finished I had to shut up the hive because of massive robbing. The robbers did not try and attack my stronger hive which is 3 feet away with no entrance reducer.

I don't have a lot of hope for the weak hive, but I think I will give it a few more weeks and then decide. I'm learning alot from the experience but I'd rather have a healthy, strong hive.

Wally, I hope the hive you are trapping out is the one that has been a problem for my bees!

Post by **Jacobs** » Mon Aug 30, 2010 7:46 am

My latest robbing adventure was my fault. I had a jar feeder about 30 feet behind my hives for the last 2 weeks or so with much interest from bees that largely appeared not to be mine. It did not trigger robbing at my hives. Late yesterday afternoon I put out a few frames for the bees to clean up instead of the jar feeder. BIG MISTAKE.

I can almost always tell when trouble is starting because there are bees exploring the windows of my enclosed back porch and my bees really don't do that because they have learned that they do not have access to it and it is not a source of food.

Within a 1/2 hour all hives were under strong attacks. I put robber screens on the ones under the most pressure and already had entrance reducers on them and the others. I would have used more robber screens if I had them. I used small rocks to further reduce the openings to the hives without the screens and used a spray bottle of water to knock clumps of robbers off the fronts of the hives. This temporarily calmed things down, and as dusk came, all calmed down. Large number of bees stayed with the frames after dark, so I didn't shake them off and bring the frames in until the morning. I probably should have gone ahead and done it after dark.

At daylight this morning, strong robbing began again. I got my jar of VICKS VAPO RUB and went to work. I smeared a small line of it along the front of the landing boards and at areas around the seams of the robber screens where robbers were fanning toward the outside and guiding robbers in. Within 10 minutes, robbing activity was reduced by 90%, and after 1/2 hour, activity was near normal. There is still probing, but in numbers that are not a real threat to any of the hives.

Breaking the scent trail of the robbers really does seem to work.

Post by **Jacobs** » Sun Jul 10, 2011 1:06 pm

I did some inspecting of 4 hives this morning and I guess there is enough of a dearth that it triggered robbing of the weakest hive. It looks queenless, but was not acting that way. It had no brood, eggs or larvae, but lots of highly polished cells, but not many workers. I put a robber screen on it and things appear to have calmed down. My guess is that I will wind up closing out that hive in the near future and giving the comb to stronger hives that can use the space.

Guilfordbeekeepers.org

Robbing

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