Robbers on the entrance feeder

[cptncatholic]

I'm in the Arkansas river valley. We haven't had rain for several weeks so last night I put an entrance feeder on with syrup in it. Today I see bees all over it, but I also see some bees in mortal combat on the ground around the hive, so I'm assuming that a lot of the bees I'm seeing are robbers and not bees from my hive.

The hive has two deep broods on it. It's a week hive, I haven't seen any eggs in over a month so I'm not even sure there is a queen in there. Trying to find some way to boost the activity and get the queen to start laying (if there's a queen in there). A few weeks ago, I thought that I saw queen cells, so I figured that I would be seeing brood by now.

I also have a hive top feeder that I could use for this hive, but I was told that a week hive won't feed from a hive top feeder.
Any other thoughts on this?

I don't want to lose this hive, but I feel like that's the direction that this is heading...

Thanks!
TC

[jadell]

Use the top feeder and don't ever listen to the person that told you that again! Take the entrance feeder out immediately and reduce the entrance. Entrance feeders cause robbing. You have now sharpened your learning curve on taking advice from people.

[jdawdy]

I feel for ya.

I had a very weak queenless hive that I put some cut-out honey and brood comb into, hoping to tide them over until I could get a queen. The heat here was vicious and the honey ran down out of the hive. I finally introduced the queen...and four days later she was dead (still in her cage), and the bottom board was littered with ripped-apart bee bodies. Every drop of honey had been robbed.

Moral of the story- weak, queenless hives are sitting ducks. I think the only thing that has a chance is to get a queen and some more bees to introduce to the have ASAP.

[cptncatholic]

Thanks for the feedback. I'm going to go remedy the situation now...
TC