Robbing?

[KQ6AR]

My wife & I installed our packages yesterday. This morning it seemed her hive was being robber, it was swarming with activity while mine had no activity.

We had the entrance reducers to the smallest 1 bee hole. The hive has a screened bottom for ventilation & a top feeder.

In panic we closed off the entrance completely. Will this be ok, or should I have left it alone?
If its OK closed, how long should I leave it that way?

[bnatural]

Does it look like fighting is going on at the entrance, or is it just clogged with lots of bees? Are you using a Boardman entrance feeder, which can incite robbing, or an internal feeder?

I've never had to close up a hive like that, so I can't speak from experience. But, since you have a SBB, ventilation should not be a problem, barring some really warm weather. However, they will need food and, being active now, they will have to relieve themselves. I wouldn't go more than a couple of days with the hive closed up.

Others, with better experience than me, will give you additional advice, I'm sure.

Bill

[KQ6AR]

Hi Bill,
Its an internal top feeder. The 2 hives are side by side. One had no activity & the other had very large amounts of activity, Thats why I paniced.
Now the activity is on the other hive, I'm leaving it with the reducer in the small 1 bee position with a pile of grass in front of it.

I can't believe robbing, with the apple & orange in bloom. But I think it is.

[Ravenseye]

I wouldn't suspect robbing although anything is possible. Here's some thoughts:

1) Hive top feeders are famous for not making a perfect seal either at the bottom or, more typically, on top where the cover goes. Even the smallest space incites all the bees....from both hives....as they find the syrup. I solve the problem by running a thin piece of weatherstripping foam around the edges where they meet another hive body or the cover. The self-stick foam that you use around doors to keep them sealed up against drafts is the stuff I use. It's available at many hardware stores.

2) Are you sure it's not orientation flights? You just hived thousands of very confused bees. They need to relieve themselves and they need to figure out where "home" is. A cloud of bees facing the front of the hive, doing circles and figure eights, but with no wrestling and fighting, is orientation.

3) Maybe you have a combination of both. Excited bees finding ways to get syrup from the outside of the hive and orientation as they figure out how to get home.

I'd keep an eye on them and, of course, watch carefully for fighting at the entrance. Newly hived packages should be reduced anyway since they're un-established and may certainly be visited by robbers so, small entrances, tight feeders and keep an eye on them. By the way, if you do have to close off the entrance, do it at night when all your bees are home. Leave it closed until well after sunrise in the morning. If you have robbers, they'll be visiting and you'll know they're not from your colony. So long as they have decent ventilation and the hive top feeder, you can keep them closed for at least a day if not more with no real problem.

[Joseph Clemens]

Besides the issuance of swarms, robbing and orientation flights of young, soon to be forages, are the most common events that have lots of bees just flying around in close proximity to the hive entrances.

Robbing often has bees fighting with other bees during the evolution -- orientation flights never do. Normal foraging has bees coming and going, often in large numbers, but with foraging there is usually no waste of time, the foragers pause at the entrance to clean their antenna, then off they go. When they return they alight and promptly enter the hive.

[KQ6AR]

Thanks guy's,

I think I had a little bit of both going on. I found the MannLake copper top didn't seal on the top feeder at all, so I took it off & put a regular telescoping cover on. The top feeders are stapled in shallow supers, & seem to seal ok on the other copper top from brushy mountain.

We reopened the entrance on the first hive, changed the ill fitting roof, Things appear to have calmed down considerably.

Again thanks & happy easter,
Dan

[indypartridge]

For a new beekeeper, a few dozen bees doing orientation flights may seem like a lot of activity, but robbing is truly a frenzy of bees. Iddee posted some pics awhile back:
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=212224