I'd like yall's opinion on one thing I've been considering. When the dearth starts, there are issues of strong hives robbing weak hives and also lots of unemployed foragers eating the stores of their own hive. I was thinking that a way to fix both problems would be to move the strongest hives to a different location in the beeyard, and then to put a box with a frame of eggs and some empty frames in place of the original box so the foragers will be concentrated in the new boxes. Then feed just those new boxes.
This should end robbing since the hives with all the foragers are being fed. Also those foragers are no longer eating honey stores. They will be forced to draw new comb and raise a new queen.... or if they fail it's no big loss.
What do you think?
1. Foragers are going to forage whether or not they are being fed. Unless it is open feeding, the taking of feed is done by house bees.
2. Robbing behavior increases as the length of the dearth increases.
3. Dearth's will result in the kill off of drones and reduction in brood production before the robbing begins.
4. Robbing consist of weak hives becoming the prey of strong hives.
5. Open feeding will decrease the likelyhood of robbing whereas in hive feeding will feed the robbing.
6. If a dearth is know to begin (lack of forage or temporary scarcity of forage) then open feed and reduce entrances and/or put on robber screens.
Have you found a good place to move your strong hives with good forage? Not many around mid summer here. (Look for cotton)
Quote from: AllenF on June 20, 2011, 09:55:21 PM
Have you found a good place to move your strong hives with good forage? Not many around mid summer here. (Look for cotton)
We don't have cotton here, but we do have tobacco. There are some large fields within 1 mile but the flowers are usually pulled off (it's called suckering) to save the plants energy for the leaves. I don't know what value these plants may be.
But my point was that within the same bee yard.... without finding a new feed source.... it might be preferable to separate the foragers from any stores they might like to eat. Then you could give them sugar and see if they will draw comb and raise a queen. Do you think they would do that?
Quote from: Brian D. Bray on June 20, 2011, 07:15:26 PM
1. Foragers are going to forage whether or not they are being fed. Unless it is open feeding, the taking of feed is done by house bees.
There aren't any house bees, except for the nurse bees tending the brood. Otherwise, these fed hives are composed of foragers only, so if they take the sugar it will be foragers doing it. Foragers are capable of reverting to house bee roles when there is a lack of house bees for necessary tasks.
I use top feeders which are reached through a slot leading from the hive into the feeder. I would think that such a feeder might be treated as exterior to the hive. In any case, are you sure that only house bees normally access such a feeder? How could you tell?
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5. Open feeding will decrease the likelyhood of robbing whereas in hive feeding will feed the robbing.
I can see that in hive feeding might increase robbing in some cases, but what I'm suggesting is feeding only those hives that contain foragers only. Such hives should have very good protection from robbing since they are loaded with older bees capable of acting as guards. And the strongest hives have no foragers so who would do the robbing?
House bees are all workers between the time they hatch to until they become foragers they include nurse bees, wax producers, nectar processing bees, guard bees, etc. If the feeding can be done for access within the hive then it will be done by house bees. Foragers forage, simple as that.
If you've got a swarm as small as 2000 bees you'll have 1500 house bees and 500 foragers. Use a obsevation hive to check this out.