Trevor said:
Conditions  have a lot to do with abandonment and, in our area, we cannot
use the abandonment method because
it would set up a big robbing problem.

Abandonment works when enough of a honey flow is in progress to keep the
bees occupied. *Can* fail when honey flows are only on for periods during
the day. You can lose many pounds of honey back into hives when failure
occurs.

As an example of what I mean. When the honey flow in our area is running all
day we can leave the screen door to the honey house open and not a single
bee. The minute the nectar flows stop the bees are back trying to gain
entrance to the honey house. A flow starts and they are gone again.

When all flows are over and supers off we can create a diversion by open
feeding in the opposite direction. Works as bees returning from the open
feeder are  bringing in stores faster than bees trying to rob around the
building. Of course not keeping 60-100 hives in your pasture would also be a
solution!

We do not use the abandon method most of the time  because we do not want to
handle heavy supers twice plus make an extra trip.

Trevor said:
You have to be at the hives before dawn next morning to pick up the supers
and straighten up the lid before robbing starts.

Bees always remember it seems the last source of nectar AND  PLACE HONEY WAS
ROBBED FROM. What if your truck breaks down or an emergency comes up and you
can not return on time? After supers are robbed next comes weak hives.

I like fume boards because they are fast but do not use a certain fume board
product because the product drives the bees out too slow. I realize from
past posts Allen Dick dislikes fume boards for various reasons he has posted
before. All valid reasons as are those made by the maker of the slow removal
from supers fume board chemical creator   about his product.

Early in a strong honey flow abandonment works. At the tail end of a honey
flow we need to remove honey supers as fast as possible before robbing
starts.Pulling all lids helps as long as the robbing has not progressed too
far.

Large scale robbing in a large bee yard is not a pretty sight. Tens of
thousands of bees fighting over honey. Stinging each other and the
beekeepers! Some of the worst stinging I have seen has been while trying to
feed starving honey bees. A small leak on a syrup pump can cause robbing or
leaking tank.

Every year at our bee meetings in fall a new beekeeper stands up and tells
of getting many stings trying to put wet supers back on hives for the bees
to clean up in mid day, without a honey flow on, when bees are  at the
largest population of the year and  all or most of the bees are in the hive.
Right before dark is the best time to return wet supers to the hive to avoid
robbing.

Sincerely,
Bob Harrison

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