Guilfordbeekeepers.org

Gosh where to start.

Had a Caucasian package come in late season, set them up with a robber screen on and constant feeding. The robbers attacked, MASS ATTACK, and basically wiped out everything. Mass kill off, all stores gone and the feeder emptied in a few hours. About 200 bees left with the queen.

Same robbers started attacking hive 2 yesterday which are Saskatraz. Quick inspection earlier in the day showed them to be queenless, so I started the effort to move the Caucasian Queen and Bees to this hive. This hive is pretty well populated with a lot of stores. About 3 hours of robbing and a lot of death and torn wax, with a robber screen on. So this hive is now closed off.

I'm not sure what else to do. Hive 1 is still ok, but i put an entrance reducer on.

Any suggestions?

Langstroth quoted another source to the effect that robbing does not usually take place unless a colony is queenless or has a diseased queen. My experience where there is persistent robbing of a colony is consistent with this. I can usually stop robbing of a queenright hive by shutting it in with a robber screen, making sure any bad corners are taped shut with painters tape, and by applying vapo rub around the seams of the hive, anywhere robbers are gathering to the smell of stores inside. When this does not work, it indicates queenlessness or a failing queen. I just watched one of my hives get robbed out by persistent attacks. It had a marked queen but also had several supercedure cells in process. It was not a particularly good looking hive, so I let it go. NONE of the other hives around it came under even serious probing.

Two options to consider would be either re-queening the hive that remains under attack or pinching that queen and combining those bees with your queenright hive. Take your losses in the Fall and split back out in early Spring.

Anyone else have suggestions?

The one under attack right now was queenless with no queen cells. Something I have noticed about the Saskatraz are that they never have swarm or supercedure cells, ever. What I tried to do was take the remnants of the Caucasian hive and seperate them with tissue paper (undied) to allow them to get used to the queen and those other bees in time and chew their way to her. I may have to do something a bit more drastic now. So essentially they have a queen now that they haven't accepted I guess.

This have has lost 2 queens this year either by death or swarm.

Since closing the robber screen completely early this morning, the robbing attempts have really died down.

At this point should I just remove the tissue paper and introduce the new queen and roll the dice?

It normally takes bees around 24 hours to chew through newspaper with a few slits put in it. I would let it go awhile longer and then see how the combining went. If robbing attempts have lessened, that is a hopeful sign that the queen has good pheromones and the hive will be better organized in defense.

I would wait until near dusk to open the hive and check on the combination--less time for mischief if robbing does start again.

What a mess on the bottom board. Robbing seems to have died down. So I opened up a tiny entry/exit way. the bottom board is a mess. Is it safe to do a quick peek tomorrow to see how the queen and the hive are behaving if the paper is chewed through?

If I was going to do that, I would make it quick and make it toward dusk.

Holy cow, the robbing has not let up. I don't think the robber screens are working anymore.