Comments on: Hive Robbers

By: April

April — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 23:51:56 +0000

Thanks for your reply Nick. I tried, but it was too late. The colony is gone now. I will have to start again in the Spring. I may try two hives this year: one in the same location and another on the opposite side of my house. At least if the colonies get weak, I will have the option of combining them. I’ll have to get creative this time to camouflage the second hive so I don’t get the city on my back again due to my nosey neighbors. The biggest problem I face is the $10,000 fine for beekeeping the city has threatened me with thanks to the neighbor to the rear of my house. My tract home lot is only about 5000 sq.ft., so locating a hive is always difficult. I really thought everything was hunky dory until the next door neighbor called in the pesticide crew. If I am lucky, one day I will be able to move to a place that appreciates bees and that respects beekeeping.

By: Nick

Nick — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 17:46:21 +0000

Hi April, sorry to hear about the insecticide problem. I’ve never tried trapping robbers to strengthen a hive but I have read about people having some success with it. My fear for your situation would be that there are not enough workers to protect the queen and if there are a good number of robbers then they may kill her. This late in the year there isn’t much that can be done to save that hive so I’d say it’s worth a try…

By: April

April — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 06:15:57 +0000

I have a question about robbing. I’m sure there are a few of you who will think I’m a little nuts. At a bee club meeting recently, I heard one member say that you can retrain robber bees to be good bees by trapping them in the hive and allowing them to get accustomed to the pheromones of the queen.

I recently had a bad thing happen to my one hive. The neighbor next door had her entire yard treated by a pesticide company. My previously heathy colony immediately started dying off at an alarming rate. After two weeks, I was surprised to find that the queen was still alive, but there were only a couple of hundred workers left. With that weakened condition, the robbers started coming.

Today, figuring I had nothing to lose, I closed up the entrance and put a one-way top board upside down on top of the hive and trapped all the robbers as they came to steal honey. They aren’t too happy about that, but I thought I would try out the idea of transforming the robbers into good worker bees. They are still in there. The person who told me about this idea had left the robbers trapped for 3 days and might have left them longer, I’m not sure. I don’t know how to contact him.

Have you ever heard of doing this and do you know if it really works?

I am sure these are feral robbers. My city in California does not allow beekeeping and there are no commericial beekeepers within 20 miles of where I live. The colony I had was a wonderful bunch of Italians, although in the past I have kept a few Africanized feral colonies that I captured–never again.

By: Bradford

Bradford — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 01:07:00 +0000

Nick – I think I have been robbed, but I had no idea they would take EVERYTHING in my hive….the bees are all gone – no dead ones around anywhere, and the frames are stipped to nothing – as if they were new – other than they look a little dirty now. There are lots of larve in the hive now – but no webs like wax moths…1) have I been robbed, and 2) how do I clean up the mess in the hive now?

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 19:03:33 +0000

Hi Juliet, glad you found the information useful! if your using a Warre hive and putting the new boxes on the bottom as you should then you don’t need to use a queen excluder (that is more for the folks using Lang hives) so you can take that off. You did the right think closing them off, hopefully you’ve already freed them though. This is kind of a late reply

By: Juliet

Juliet — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 16:33:00 +0000

This thread is really helping me. But I still have some questions. I went to check on my hive yesterday to see how they are doing with the new honey super and the queen excluder that I put on 3 days ago to come to find my hive being robbed! At first I thought they were swarming but then I saw all of the dead bees and the fighting! I felt that my hive was a strong hive (2 deeps full) super active and sometimes a little aggressive… I am wondering if putting on the queen excluder caused the problem… it doesn’t sit 100% flush with the wood so there wasn’t a clean seal, letting the sweet aroma of honey seep out and signal the bees??? My girls put up a good fight. I closed down the entrance just like all of you said, I misted them with water and smoke and finally after sun down there were only a small clump of bees on the side of the hive. I then closed the whole hive down. They have a screen bottom and hopefully enough honey to last a few days, but because they are on my roof and there is no other place to relocate them, this was my next bet to try and deter the robber bees from coming back…
My Question…

Is what I did right? How long can my bees stay in the hive all closed up? Will this deter the robber bees if they can no longer get to the honey source?

This is my first hive (I have 2 and the second one is only 1 deep) and I know people loose hives all the time, but I am so nervous and I just want all the bees to be ok.

Thanks for your help and again, great article!

By: Debi

Debi — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 14:54:53 +0000

Hi,

Great plans.
I have 2 questions….

1. Do I paint the landing pad & entrance? [ I am using Linseed Oil ]

2. What is the purpose of the quilt sandwiched between the top hive box & quilt box? As I understand it, this is in addition to the quilt box?

Thanks,
Debi

By: Nick

Nick — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 16:57:40 +0000

Hi Gil, I don’t think blocking them in is going to make them want to stay There could be a number of reasons that they are absconding, it’s possible you didn’t get the queen, there could be something about the new hive they don’t like etc… if i were you I would contact Iddee at http://www.beekeepingforums.com. It’s free to sign up over there and they talk swarms quite a bit.

By: Gil

Gil — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 23:27:28 +0000

I have had bees for about one month in australia. We have tried twice to catch swarmes of bees. Each time we put them in a box they left in a couple of days. We have finaly got a swarm to stay. Two days ago I saw a big cloud of bees around my hive. There was a lot of activity around the entrance , so i totally blocked up the entrance. Did I do right? PLEASE ANSWER!!!!