Does feeding result in orientation flights?

[Duane]

I don't like the idea of feeding, but when I look in my hives and see no honey, just mostly empty combs, I figure I need to feed.

I've seen more than once where I've fed a hive and it looked to me that the bees started orientating, flying in ever widening loose figure 8's.  This was mid to late afternoon, when I've seen orientating flights in the past.  The first time I fed, I thought it was robbing, and perhaps some was, so I closed up the entrance tight.  I also saw some bees scenting on top of the hive.  I wondered if they were telling their home hive this is where to rob!  Do they do that?  Towards evening I opened it and bees came out and started their orientating flights.  Do bees do that if they are robbing?

Anyway, after that, when I fed a hive, I narrowed the entrance to about a half inch.  It's amazing how fast bees can go in and out through that little entrance.  Over time, the activity diminished though a few were still flying their widening figure 8 patterns.

I see guards at the entrance, and they seem ok with all that, not that they could really do anything.  Think robbing is going on or does feeding change the dynamics of the hive?  I see more activity at the hive I feed.  Does it "inspire" them to collect pollen or nectar instead of hanging on the hive?

[little john]

I've seen more than once where I've fed a hive and it looked to me that the bees started orientating, flying in ever widening loose figure 8's.  This was mid to late afternoon ...

Does it "inspire" them to collect pollen or nectar instead of hanging on the hive?

Feeding does two other things, apart from supplying nutrition.

The first is that it causes great excitement, which may be of interest to any bees lurking around intent on robbing.

The second is that a message soon passes around the hive that there's 'nectar' coming in (from somewhere ...), and so yes - many forager scout bees will then take to the air in an attempt to locate the precise external source of that 'nectar', in order to pass that info on to the forager workforce.

So - to reduce the likelihood of robbing, and to save scout bees from making unnecessary and fruitless searches, it pays to feed last thing in the evening - if possible (and if convenient) - with just enough syrup to be consumed by morning, by which time the excitement and stimulus to search will have subsided.
LJ

[divemaster1963]

as little john has said. I can add that i have see yards that when they are feeding that the introduction of syrup does shock their systems and cause them to have momentary diareha and that they will swram out for cleansing flights till their systems adjust.


john

[Oblio13]

Seems like often when I disturb a hive for any reason, there is shortly afterwards a lot of bees orienting. I've often wondered why.

[Duane]

Today, I waited until towards dark to feed.  The bees had already moved down among the frames.  Only once in awhile did a bee fly in or out.  I added the inverted jars inside, closed up the hive with the robbing screen on, and in a little while, bees started coming out one by one and flying away.  It was pretty dark, I could just see the bees coming out.  If they are needing a cleansing flight, will they get lost, or the ones who don't fly have problems?  Seems odd that they would go looking for a nectar source when it's dark.

[Michael Bush]

>Does feeding result in orientation flights?

I would be looking for signs of robbing.  That is a more likely result of feeding...

[little john]

Seems odd that they would go looking for a nectar source when it's dark.

My money would be on these being 'robber scouts' returning to base to report where there are 'easy pickings' rather than being foragers, as bees can't forage in the dark.   But - as robbing doesn't take place at night, hopefully their enthusiasm to rob will have worn off by morning ...

No doubt they will send out a 'robber scout' to check things out first thing in the morning, but if the feed's been consumed by that time, then the excitement will have abated, and so the robber-scouts will have nothing much to report.  Hence the frequent recommendation to only feed last thing at night, and then only with an amount that can be consumed by morning.
LJ

[bwallace23350]

I am going to introduce some feed in December and see if they take it. If they don't I will take it off after a week and I am going to do the same again in late January

[tjc1]

You have to consider the problems that can be created by all the moisture that feeding adds to a hive - in the winter especially. That's why it is recommended that you stop feeding in October (at least here in the Northeast), so that they can dry and cap it before the cold weather.

[bwallace23350]

I am just not sure they have enough honey to get through the winter because of the drought we are in. We a poor golden rod year because usually it is bloomed out but instead it burned up this year. We have been over a month now without a drop of rain.

[Duane]

>Does feeding result in orientation flights?

I would be looking for signs of robbing.  That is a more likely result of feeding...

That's what I'm having problems with determining.  Do robbing bees do orientations flights to make sure they know where to come back to?  How else does one determine if they are being robbed if fighting isn't always an indicator?

[Duane]

Seems odd that they would go looking for a nectar source when it's dark.

My money would be on these being 'robber scouts' returning to base to report where there are 'easy pickings' rather than being foragers, as bees can't forage in the dark.   But - as robbing doesn't take place at night, hopefully their enthusiasm to rob will have worn off by morning ...

No doubt they will send out a 'robber scout' to check things out first thing in the morning, but if the feed's been consumed by that time, then the excitement will have abated, and so the robber-scouts will have nothing much to report.  Hence the frequent recommendation to only feed last thing at night, and then only with an amount that can be consumed by morning.
LJ

This was a case of not much activity near dark, I feed them, add the robbing screen, and they start coming out of the hive a couple of minutes later.  I have no reason to suspect they were in the process of robbing before I fed them.  The other hives were also quite at the time.  The following day, there was a cluster of bees around the screen, but later I would suspect they were not being robbed.  Bees on the outside would jump at every bee approaching, but then decide they were ok to pass.

[Duane]

A question I have which bwallace may also be having, how much do you feed, how much do bees need?  Alabama is different than Kansas, so that may depend.  I've heard it to be 2 frames of food per frame of bees.  How does one determine how many bees one has?  Seems like a guess to me, especially since some of those frames contain some food and the bees aren't even over complete frames.  And is that when they are cold or warm.

I've been feeding quarts and maybe I should be feeding gallons.  Seems I keep feeding them and there's still nothing.  Not sure they are being robbed (from my own bees, anyway) because I need to feed the other hives, too.  They're just empty.  Aren't bees supposed to produce honey....  I feed them, then that messes things up, but don't want them to die from starvation.

[AR Beekeeper]

If you are using a deep and a medium for a brood/food chamber you should have the medium full and four to five frames of food stores in the deep.  If using a double deep the top deep should be full and the usual two outside frames in the deep full, with food stored on the rest of the frames in a two to four inch band across the top of the frames.

When feeding food to be stored for winter you should feed with a feeder that gives the syrup rapidly so that the bees can't eat it instead of storing it in the comb.  Feeding slowly is good to build brood populations, but it doesn't work for winter stores.  You now need to feed by the gallon, not by the quart.

You estimate adult populations by inspecting and counting frames covered by bees, partial frames are added together to count as fully covered frames.  If it is warm and foragers are flying add 15 or 20% for the foragers.

Bees can make honey if they have a strong population of foragers and there is nectar in the fields, they can't make it if it is not there.

[Duane]

I guess that kind of answered my thought about feeding speed.  I thought maybe there was too much odor of sugar water in the air and so what if I made a tube that runs down into the hive so only a few bees could get it at a time.  Guess that will indicate to them a flow going on and they'll build up brood.  Maybe for spring?  In other words, have a spigot in the hive from a large container on top.  Easier to swap. 

As far as my question about producing honey, I meant they haven't produced any all summer.  It's more like I'm trying to keep these insects alive because they can't fend on their own.  While it's true I split them because they were raising queen cells, the other hives which didn't, still are light.

Feeding at night does seem to reduce robbing.  I'm just concerned if some are perishing if they fly out at night and if they don't make it back.

I fed another hive just after sunset but a little lighter so I could watch them better.  Hardly any activity at any of the hives beforehand.  A few minutes later, they started coming out.  Still no activity at the other hives.  I wouldn't say they were pouring out, but quite a few were crawling around on the sides of the box and several were flying around.  Kind of aimlessly.  Which got me to thinking...

Is the following scenario possibly what might be happening:  The first feeders tell the rest of the hive, nectar coming in, it's right here, here are the coordinates.  (Except if the reporters need the sun, they don't see where it was.  Maybe they know where it is based on they're at home and the time, or where they last saw it.)  The additional foragers, say, let's go, fly out, and then say, now what were those coordinates?  Why, it's right here.  Then they fly around trying to find where this supposed nectar source is supposed to be.

[Acebird]

They don't need coordinates to find syrup in the hive they use smell.  You have to make sure they are not raising brood with the syrup if you are in a dearth.  You will exhaust the hive of pollen and blow the whole build up phase in the spring.

[little john]

Sugar water doesn't have any smell - that's why you sometimes have to trickle some down from a jar feeder in order to get the girls started.  It's the excitement that feeding causes which robbers latch onto.

BTW - there's 2 different kinds of robbing - one is the out-and-out cloud of robbers pinging at the entrance which everyone's used to seeing.   The other kind happens in the background and often goes unnoticed by both bees and beekeepers.  I used to call this 'potential robbing', but then I read At The Hive Entrance by a guy named Storch, and he calls this 'Latent Robbing' - which is a much better term, as latent means hidden.

Latent Robbing is probably happening on a very small scale all the time in most hives - that's how other hives get to know so quickly when another hive has been fed (if they haven't), and is thus probably the mechanism by which full-scale robbing breaks out.

My guess it was those bees which took off from the hive at dusk ...

It's a bit like having Fifth Columnists or Spies in the camp.

LJ

[Duane]

So how does one feed without creating excitement, and at the same time fast enough not to stimulate brood rearing?

Do you think latent robbers are in the hive at dark, just setting there monitoring things?  When they were leaving the hive, they weren't making a bee-line to their hive, but flying around haphazardly.

[little john]

I think the idea with the Latent Robbing hypothesis is that it takes place more-or-less continuously, so that the presence of 'spies' becomes pretty-much a permanent feature.

If the bees which exited the hive were flying around randomly, that suggests that they may have been foragers responding to what they thought was nectar coming into the hive - and so they went out intent on looking for it's source, only to discover that it was too dark for them to forage.  A touch of confusion perhaps ?

I've had bees come out and form a rosette around the entrance hole when I've fed late at night, but then they've also done this when I've approached the hive and not given them any feed - it's just bees being bees.  I think it's possible to read too much into these odd events - after all, bees sense the world around them in a very different way than we do, and much of our so-called knowledge about their behaviour is based on guess-work.
LJ

[herbhome]

I pulled my hive top feeders off today and it started orientation flights. I've also had them do it after an inspection. Think its just their nature to check on everything in the house after its been moved around.