I been ROBBED!

[David LaFerney]

Not me of course - my bees. 

I've posted pictures before asking - "Is this robbing?"  Now having seen the real thing, I think I can say that you will know it for sure if you see it.  At least if it's an all out frenzy.

Bee Armageddon.  Clumps of wrestling bees condensing out of the air and getting so heavy they collapse and fall like water - over and over about once a second.

I caused it.  I had one extra frame of stores (capped syrup from feeding) that wouldn't fit in the rest of the hives so I put it above the inner cover to see if they would just move it down.  Then I put the telescoping cover right on top of an empty super to top it off.  Weeks ago I had put a 1/2" strip of wood inside of the front of the outer cover so that all the rain would run off the back.  I didn't realize that this made a nice long opening along under the sides of the cover.  This didn't cause a problem as long as I was feeding through the inner cover - bees couldn't go in and out that way.

Anyway, I fixed the unintentional top entrance, and reduced the main entrance down to 5/8" or so.  No effect - the battle rages on.  So, I covered the whole thing with a wet sheet.  An hour later - no noticeable effect, and when I pulled the sheet off I noticed that the masses of bees had moved the entrance reducer enough to get through the top of it.  So I got my smoker and dosed them real good.  That finally broke up the party.  I also screwed my entrance reducers on.

At first I thought it was probably my other hive of Italians doing the robbing, but when I finally broke up the party it didn't seem like that was where they went home to.  Also I noticed quite a few tiny little glossy black honey bees that were very determined to try to get in through any little crack that they could find.  The black bees hung out much longer.

Maybe I caught this before too much damage was done - I'm not opening it up to look for a few days though.

Lesson learned - batten down those hatches!