Rain Storm Incited Crazy Robbing

[AndrewT]

I had an empty hive body on one of my hive stands that had a couple of frames with some honey in them.  I usually never leave any honey out like that, but I had intended to put those frames into weaker colonies and they had built up so well that I decided to save them for June nucs.  Anyway, with the clover starting to bloom, I didn't think it would be any problem and my bees were just ignoring it anyway.  Big mistake.

Today we had a heavy rain storm with hail that blew through.  After the rain, I went out to check the hives and there were bees going crazy trying to get into the small opening in the empty hive.  I moved the empty hive way away from the rest of my hives, hoping the robbers would follow, but then they started trying to get into the hive next to where it had been on the stand.  I wasn't worried at first, since the rest of my hives are going pretty strong, but I've never seen so many robbers descend so fast on a hive.  I closed all the entrances down really small, but the robbers were coming on strong.  It started to rain more and that slowed them down for the evening.  I whipped up some screen doors with tunnel-like entrances (read about doing that somewhere) to put on tomorrow if the robbers are back in the morning.  I've seen robbing lots of times before, mostly later in the year with weaker colonies, but never anything this fast and violent.

[AllenF]

I brought 2 deadouts to the house yesterday and ran out of the room in the freezer so I left one deep still on the screened bottom out in the yard open and today they were covered with bees robbing.  Couple more days, and it will be cleaned out.   Bees will rob even with a flow on. 

[tillie]

After a violent storm in Atlanta last night (we had 4 inches of rain in Virginia Highlands) one of my hives was being robbed out when I returned from being with grandkids all morning.  I put on a robber screen and draped a wet sheet over the hive, but there are wax shards all over the ground under the SBB and I'm afraid this hive is done for.

Linda T in Atlanta

[AllenF]

So you were hogging all the rain?   

Extracting every afternoon here.   The bees just hang out on the porch smelling honey and trying to get in.   It is dry out here.  I need to check some of the smaller hives here.     

[Beeboy01]

I've just started putting the wet supers back on the hives after extracting to keep the robbing down. I lost a hive to robbing last year and am trying to prevent it from happening again.

[vmmartin]

I believe that with your flow going on or even just starting, the bees are working it and then the downpour. A lot of rain will wash nectar out or off of plants and the bees who are in fervent gather mode are desperately looking for a food source and they are not going to hang out on a recent nectar source waiting for the plant to re-establish nectar flow.  They go get it where it is available and where they can get to it.  Recently, I have seen my bees bombard left over honey in a bucket early in the morning only to leave it mid morning to go work on something that is producing nectar and then return to the bucket late in the evening.