feral marauders?

[phill]

Can more experienced beeks tell me what I saw today?

I checked my hive this morning. They looked good: calm, busy. It's a fairly strong colony: 3 nearly full deeps.

About 2 hours later I was going about my business on the other side of my yard, about 70 yards from the hive, and I noticed that there were bees all around me. They were foraging like crazy: going after the flowers, plants, weeds; some even flying into the garage to explore. Intense but indiscriminate. They seemed to be Italians-- as are mine, and about 90% of the other bees around here.

Curious, I went back up to my hive to check. There was a lot of excitement, and definitely some fighting at the entrance. I watched for a couple of minutes, and decided that my girls had the situation under control. Checked back again in a half-hour, and there was still some excitement and fighting, but much less.

My reading is that some feral bees came through looking for whatever they could find, tried to rob my bees, and were driven away. Does that sound reasonable? Anything else I should be thinking about?

[JP]

It could have been feral bees, someone else's bees or your bees trying to rob each other. If you don't have your entrances reduced you may want to.


...JP

[rast]

 Yep, sounds like something set a hive on a robbing spree. Italians seem to be the worst about robbing. Just make sure the entrance to your hive is defensible regarding the size to the number of guard bees. My experience is usually it will dwindle with only a few trying the next day if they were unsuccessful.