I didn't want to put my supers away wet, so I
decided to stack them and let the bees do the job of
cleaning them. The stack had a cover and had a reduced
entrance. The bottom board was a double screen with a small
adjustable entry. One of the supers had some unripe honey
that I didn't extract. I had removed this super to reduce a
hive down to 2 deeps and a medium.
 
        The first thing I noticed was that only bees from a
single hive were allowed to enter by the other bees around
the entrance. Wasps and bees from other hives were
discouraged. It seems that with the reduced entrance the war
was quickly over and the robbing proceeded in an orderly
fashion. The robbers were from one of my hives. The hive had
been reduced to 2 deeps with the removal of the extracted
super.
 
        Last night, day 2, I noticed 1000's of bees on the
landing board and the front of the hive. More than I had
ever seen before even of hot humid nights. This hive is not
my strongest. It had never had more bees than my strongest
hive outside the entrance until now. No such mass of bees
occurred on day 1 of the clean up.
 
        My question is why so many bee outside now? The
weather is cool and dry. I'm assuming the honey that was
robbed does not need much evaporation so ventilation should
not be a major issue. My quess is that the hive had run out
of space and the bees might be loaded and waiting for
unloading room.
 
        I added one of the extracted supers just in case it
was a space problem. However, this is what I was trying to
avoid when I didn't replace the super originally. Does
anyone have any insights?  Am I courting disaster with this
approach?
 
        Thanks,
 
        Jim Moore
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