> So, the theory presented here is that weak or deadout colonies with
all-capped stores will not be robbed.
Not a theory, it's the norm out here. It's occurring every day this month
in my home "junk yard" of hives.
>It raises the question of why a dwindling colony suffering from varroa
infestation would have any significant "open honey".
That's not consistent with what one sees most often in a collapsing colony.
When I posed the question to beekeepers around the world, their responses
were that in areas such as the Eastern U.S., there is still a nectar flow
going on during the time when colonies tend to collapse from varroa.
Robbing is not about how much honey is stored, but rather whether there is
ANY ripening nectar present in the hive.
>Its interesting that east-coast bees don't seem to obey this proposed rule
of behavior.
From what I hear, that's exactly what they do.
Allow me to give an example that really opened my eyes as far as robbing
behavior during our dry summer.
For our county fair, I built a 10-ft tall hexagon structure, with the sides
covered with black screen, and the top open.
We place a hive on a stand inside, and the bees fly in and out of the top
of the cage.
We perform a daily hive inspection, with fairgoers closely watching through
the screen. The exhibit is extremely popular.
During the first week of demos some years ago, I made the mistake of poking
my finger into a comb of honey and tasting it, in order to demonstrate how
we beekeepers do it. I returned the comb to the hive, wrapped up the
inspection, and closed the hive.
Within minutes, there were dozens of bees bumping into the screen on the
outside of the cage, in front of the hive.
To make a long story short, I eventually figured out that those bees were
potential robbers from other hives in the neighborhood. And they would
immediately respond to the scent of disturbed honey in the plume of air
exiting the display hive. If there was no honey disruption, there would be
a minimal amount of bees outside the cage in front of the hive.
By experimentation, we were able to eliminate any bees outside the cage by
forcing the demo bees to enter and exit by flying up through a stack of
empty supers. This directed any hive scent up to the top of the cage. End
of curious bees outside the cage screen!
Following this success, I started paying attention around my home yard and
honey house as to exactly the stimuli that would result in robbing, or no
robbing. For example, no robbing takes place in springtime when we have
hundreds of boxes of drawn comb still stacked on pallets from over the
winter. Many stacks contain hundreds of pounds of overwintered honey. The
boxes are stacked on pallets, with plenty of bee access via the bottom.
Yet no robbing takes place unless we first cue the bees to the particular
scent of the honey in a particular stack.
And as Trevor pointed out about allowing bees to drift from supers pulled
and set on end next to a hive, I used to be able to do this during the
alfalfa (lucerne) honey flow, without starting robbing. But if I should
try it the day after the blooming alfalfa field was cut for hay, the
robbing would be incredibly intense.
As far as I can tell, robbing is all about scent.
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
530 277 4450
ScientificBeekeeping.com
>
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