About 20 new hives were moved to a field about 1/8 of a mile from mine yesterday. Since then there seems to be a lot of robbing of my 2 hives. I put on robbing screens tonight but after 2 days of activity I am not sure they will be effective. My hives are not the strongest right now. So what if some of the robbing bees were kept in the hive? How long would they have to be there for them to become part of my hive and strengthen it? What if I put an escape board upside down below the bottom box, Would they find a way I'm and then join the hive after a while? I assume they could only be kept in for a couple of days before needing to remove the escape board. I am not really planning on doing this, I don't think it's ethical to try to acquire someone else's bees like this, but was just curious
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What are those hives pollenating ?
This is a small Vermont town, there is no commercial crop to pollinate. Starting this week there are a lot of wild apples, honeysuckle, dandelions and other wildflowers. It's mostly a wooded area.
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I have screened in a hive full of robbers and moved them miles away for a week. The robbers stayed and strengthened the hive. It worked well.
If you lock them for 3 days, they become part of the hive. The problem is that if you do not provide them with 1 to 1 or at least some water, you can kill them especially if it is real hot.
Jim