A long time beekeeper friend died early this yr.. My neighbor and I told his wife we would get the honey extracted for her - they have 35 hives.
Last Sat. morning we went over there and removed 37 full supers - brought them back to the garage - stacked them and started extracting. There were bees everywhere. We aren't experts but we did pretty good. He had a 6 frame motorized extractor - we worked down 15 supers on Sat. - leaving 22. To make a long story short - the other help she said she had never showed up - no one worked on the supers until last night - the garage doors were not bee secure - the supers were not covered tightly - this is right in the middle of a bee yard. Do you see where I'm leading to....?
I couldn't believe what I saw last night when we went back to work on the extracting. The bees had completely remove all the honey out of 15 supers. They had removed at least 700 lbs. of honey and put it back out in the hives in the bee yard in about 53 hrs.. There were only 7 supers to extract and some of them had been robbed down. It was amazing. Nothing was lost we just have to go get the honey again.
Lesson learned: Never leave uncovered - unattended full supers were bees can get to them or they WILL take back from where it came......:)
I can't imagine how many bees were there robbing but to move 700 lbs. in honey in 53 hrs........ you do the math....!
Steve SC
Thats fascinating! No wonder humans have been in wonder of these little beings for thousands of years. Bees never fail to amaze me, there is always something like this that brings the childlike sense of wonder back into me. Ah the hidden mysteries of science and nature...
With 35 hives in such close proximity to the extracting sight I'm surprized you had any left at all. The lesson you learned is miss stated it should be: Never harvest more honey than you can extract in one day.
If bees can get to a honey source they will rob it in total, often within 48 hours. You might have notcied that as you were busy extracting the bees were already robbing the honey.
>Lesson learned: Never leave uncovered - unattended full supers were bees can get to them or they WILL take back from where it came......
That's why it's all in my kitchen when I extract. You can't have it anywhere the bees can get to. The feeding frenzy can be frightening and destructive.
"The feeding frenzy can be frightening and destructive."
It was both frightening and destructive. The bees had tunnel vision - they were unaware of anything except the honey they were robbing. They never tryed to sting. There were many hundreds of dead bees on the floor and right outside the garage on the ground - I guess they just worked themselved to death. Their wings were shredded and alot were just walking on the ground.
I try to see that it doesn't happen again.... It was something to see.
Has anyone else had this happen to them or am I the only uneducated extractor here...... previously uneducated that is......:)
Steve SC
They get to fighting over the honey. A robbing frenzy can be very hard on the bees.