Robbing

[pargyle]

OK ... I've just started a Nuc off with a bought in queen ... three frames of emerging brood and bees froom three separate hives - a good two frames of capped honey and a drawn but empty brood frame. Plenty of bees in there. Queen introduced yesterday and accepted after a couple of days in the cage in the Nuc. It's in the same apiary at home as my other colonies.

Got home today to find they were getting robbed by one of my other hives ... I know which one as I sprinkled icing sugar on the bees that were leaving the nuc and I could see exactly where the robbers were coming from or at least going back to. The robbing only appears to have started this afternoon - fine and warm and obviously the bees were out and about from my other colonies. It only appears to be one hive doing the robbing at the moment and oddly it's not one I took the frames from.

For tonight I've closed the nuc entrance up ... it's not that hot and it's an 8 frame modified Paynes nuc with a mesh floor so they will be fine. I shook an extra couple of super frames of bees in there as well just to boost the numbers. I'm aware there's always a risk from robbing when making up nucs in the same apiary and usually my back up is to take the nuc elsewhere if it starts ...

The question is ... what next ?

Is the robbing going to continue tomorrow - do the robbers have an overnight memory ?

If I leave the nuc closed up will the robbers lose interest ?

I can move the Nuc to another position the garden but my out apiary is not available at present. So any move would be a maximum of about 50 metres - albeit with some trees and other obstacles in the way.

I can turn the disc down to a minimum when I open them again ...

Any more suggestions ....

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Just move them to the other end of the garden and keep an eye on them

 

[Erichalfbee]

Yes I agree with JBM
Buggers aren’t they!

 

[pargyle]

Yes I agree with JBM
Buggers aren’t they!

It's a big strong colony that is doing the robbing and they have obviously sensed that there are frames of stores in the nuc and seized the opportunity .... i closed up the entrance and stood for about half an hour with my smoker discouraging them ... worked to some extent - they got a bit busy cleaning up the ones that were returning covered in icing sugar. I'll move the Nuc first thing in the morning and hopefully they will be far enough away for the robbers to lose interest - it's a very shady area under a big yew tree so I'll leave the entrance closed until I'm sure there's no robbers finding them again.

 

[jeff33]

Moving them is the easiest but if they are in your garden you can feed them in the evening little at the time so they don't store it.

 

[elainemary]

I had an incident this week, totally my fault. Inspecting a queen raising colony before removing a super. Covered the super and placed it on some wbc lifts but didn’t cover the underside. A large double Nuc nearby started robbing it. Bees darting between it and the Nuc. As well as closing the entrance of the Nuc to one bee space , I sprayed the entrance heavily with water to simulate rain for a few mins and they settled down. If your incident repeats today you could try a watering can with a fine hose outside the bigger hive. Helped as it was early evening rather than early in the day, I haven’t seen anything amiss since.

 

[Ian123]

Moving them is the easiest but if they are in your garden you can feed them in the evening little at the time so they don't store it.

Don’t whatever you do feed them you’ll just make it worse. Made up Nucs with lots of young bees are unbalanced it can take a few days for them to sort themselves out. Move if you can bees can find a victim a mile off. There should be plenty of nectar about atm so lots of other easy sources. Do watch closing in poly Nucs even with mesh floors and few bees I’ve had them over heating!

 

[Curly green finger's]

I would move the nuc to an out apiary let them settle and sort them selves out for a week or two then bring them back a nuc that strong should be able to defend its self once they are stable.

 

[oliver90owner]

Phil,

It’s what we call silent robbing? No fighting?

If so, nothing to do with being able to defend themselves, I expect.

Bees added from that hive have simply ‘gone home’ and brought back news of an easy food supply.

As above, moving them away should solve the problem.

Try to make sure that added bees are only nurse bees by giving the frames a ‘fair’ shake to dislodge the older flying bees while leaving the nurse bees clinging on.

I always shake in more bees from other frames to ensure plenty of bees in the freshly made up box.

I would expect just starting the nuc with little or no stores (particularly open stores), until adding them in the evening, would also reduce the chances of this happening.

I’ve never experienced it - but I have always preferred not to mix bees if possible. Just one frame of emerging brood is enough - wait for those bees to emerge and add another frame of emerging brood, etc. Takes a bit more effort from you but avoids being short of nurse bees at the start - and marginally slower, but gets there soon enough.

RAB

 

[pargyle]

I moved them to the other side of my garden, my out apiary is not available at present... before I moved them I opened them up and a few bees left the nuc and returned to their original hive ... only about 20 or so, I dusted them as they left so they were robbers. Clearly robbing bees have an overnight memory of where they should go back to. Once they had left I closed the nuc up and moved it. I then put a hive with a couple of drawn but more or less empty frames in it (one frame had a small patch of capped ivy honey at the top) in the place where the nuc was and .... the robbers are busy cleaning that out and now a few hours later - no signs of robbing of the nuc yet so they have not found it. Closed the nuc entrance down to the absolute minimum with the disc and I may make a tube entrance to fit - I have a robbing screen that I've used successfully for wasps but I don't think it will work for bees.

RAB - you are right - it was largely silent robbing although there was a little bit of fighting going on - the robbers are all stripey mongrels from one of my open mated queens from last year - she lays up mostly black bees but clearly there's some stripey genes in there producing bees with a lazy attitude !

I'll have a look in the Nuc tonight and see how much damage they have done to the stores in there - I know from past experience how quickly frames can be robbed out and I don't want them to starve even with the amount of forage that's about there won't be that many foragers in there yet. I have some invertbee and a nuc sized rapid feeder so if it looks like they need it I'll put a feeder on overnight.

 

[pargyle]

Well I've been out and checked them ... stores were dramatically reduced but there are plenty of bees in the nuc and I think they are OK now in terms of robbing - a few dead bees in the reduced entrance which I cleared out but the guards were out and at me pretty quickly so I suspect if there is any more robbing activity they will be holding their own.

I gave them a litre of Invertbee in a rapid feeder which they should take down overnight. I'll keep an eye on things tomorrow but hopefully it's not going to be an issue.

 

[pargyle]

Just checked again this morning ... all colonies flying and busy ... the robbing colony is back in and out of the now largely robbed out hive I left in place of the Nuc ... I rather hope they will eventually tire of this rather fruitless game. No sign of any robbers now at the nuc entrance and they have taken down the litre of invertbee I gave them last night. I'll leave them until tomorrow and then have a look and see if the new queen is getting under way.

Breathes a sigh of relief ..... it's always a worry no matter how long you've been beekeeping.

 

[user 819]

Once the robbers find the pillaging at the old location is fruitless, one would think they will call it a day in expending their energy.

 

[pargyle]

Once the robbers find the pillaging at the old location is fruitless, one would think they will call it a day in expending their energy.

That's what I'm hoping for ...there wasn't much in there that they could rob out although they were still coming and going this morning ... Nuc remains clear of robbers tonight.