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  • From: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
  • To: Blair Christian <blair.christian AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Another newbie question- robbers?
  • Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2011 17:46:21 -0400

Blair,

Does your nuc have a lot of bees? Young bees will "flurry" around the entrance the first time they come out to make cleansing flights. They'll bobble in the air, facing the entrance. They can do this in large numbers. But these are Happy Bees, and over time you'll learn to tell the difference between this activity and robbing. If you stand near the entrance when these Happy Bees are flying, they leave you alone. On the other hand, if the hive is being robbed and you stand near the entrance you may very well get stung. If the robbing hasn't been going on for long, you'll see bees fighting at the entrance. If the robbing has gone on for a long time, the "home bees" will be defeated and you may not see any fighting.

A cup of sugar syrup a day isn't a whole lot, so that by itself doesn't suggest a problem.

Check the comb on your frames. If they are empty and ragged-looking, and/or there are wax flakes on the bottom board (if you have a solid bottom), then that is a sure sign of robbing. Robbers are obnoxious guests and they rip up the hive looking for what they want.

If you decide that you are in fact being robbed, shut off the entrance entirely and leave it that way until tomorrow. If you've got a screened bottom board, you can use a towel or something similar to close the entrance (the hive won't suffocate because of the screened bottom). If you don't have a screened bottom board, close the entrance with some screen or something else that "breaths".

Once robbing starts it is hard to stop, so prevention is much better than remediation.

Reducing the entrance is a good idea when you are starting a small nuc. I would use a 3/4 by 3/4 stick, long enough to cover ALL but about two inches of the entrance. In your video, bees are coming and going at will all along the front of the hive, so the stick you've used doesn't seem to be fulfilling its purpose of creating a small "defensive line".

I would also highly recommend using something other than a Boardman entrance feeder. There are lots of interesting options but I prefer cheap, simple & effective. If you have an empty hive body, put it on top of the bottom deep and simply set the inverted mason jar that you already have directly on the top bars of the frames, making sure that most of the lid holes are accessible to the bees. Voila, now you have top feeder. Any robber bees will now have to travel through the entire hive population to steal syrup. You can use more than one jar if you like, or a bigger one.

Good luck!

Randall Austin



On 6/19/2011 12:28 PM, Blair Christian wrote:
Hi All,

I just got my first bees last week- a nuc from the Carolina bee
company in Youngsville. Call me paranoid, but sometimes there are
just a few workers flying in and out, but other times there are
"large" (large relative to what it usually is) numbers of bees
zigzagging and flying in/out of the hive. I remember seeing a Keith
Delaplane video where he mentioned that was a sign of robber bees. I
put a few sticks around the entrance to restrict the movement. The
behavior has been consistent since the day after I got them, but these
bee clouds around the front of the hive have gotten bigger and bigger,
they come and go at different times of the day.

Video here (15 sec):
https://picasaweb.google.com/blair.christian/Animals#5619965362738696914

Photos:
https://picasaweb.google.com/blair.christian/Animals#5619963851425860354
https://picasaweb.google.com/blair.christian/Animals#5619963828383035842

They've been going through about a cup of 1:1 sugar syrup a day as well.

Is this normal, or if it is robber bees, what do I do?

Best,
Blair
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