Bees - Ready To Rumble

[greenbtree]

There has been so much discussion on robbing lately that I did a round of checking my five hives today.  None of them are close to one another, I have them scattered around my property.  No one was being robbed, thank goodness.  It is sunny, calm, and in the upper 60's today so everyone is out squeezing the last few drops of nectar out of the asters.  Lots of activity. 

I noticed that every hive had tons of guards patrolling the entrances - where earlier in the year you would see 2 or 3 guards at the entrance, today they averaged about 20 to 30!  Every worker coming in would be rushed by 4 to 5 guards and checked before being allowed to continue.  On one hive I saw one bee mobbed and thrown out.  Maybe a scout from another hive.

I find it wonderful that the bees obviously are ramped up to prevent robbing at this time of year, and I am going to keep it in mind.  If I don't see that many guards at an entrance when other hives have a lot, I will quick slap on a reducer - hopefully avoid the robbing in the first place.  Luckily none of my hives seem to be in a weak position right now.

JC

[AllenF]

Sounds good so far.   As for guarding the hive, everyone had the same thing in mind it sounds like.

[jclark96]

My normally calm be were definately ready to rumble a week ago when I checked on them. I got stung about 10 times.

[Michael Bach]

I have 6 hives and I have going through robbing almost every day.  I did the usual things of entrance reduction and smoke but all were temporary.  Every day when I get home I would check the hives and notice 20-30 war casualties.  Finally I had enough and took large clumps of straw held down with a brick and closed off each hive.  That worked like a charm.  The resident bees work hard enough to get in and out and the robbers lose interest quickly.

[L Daxon]

I had the hive that was being robbed all to hell earlier in the week.  Things have quieted down, either because all the honey is robbed out or the entrance has been reduced down.

What I noticed this morning was that it looked like the girls had guards posted all around the top cover, in addition to the front entrance.  They looked like they were posted every 6-10 inches just waiting for some foreigner to even think about flying by.  I don't know if that was what was really going on but it sure looked like it.