Is this what robbing looks like (video)

[beesohappy]

These are swarms that moved in this spring. My wife and I have seen this several times and always between 6-7pm and it only lasts for about 30 min. There's about 8 frames between brood, pollen, honey and nectar. I was planning on letting them swarm into the yellow nucs you see. I checked them soon after seeing it for myself and found that the nuc on the top had a small bunch of bees and a laying worker (several eggs in one cell) and honey. At that time I closed down the entrances of all the hives and figured I'd put it in gods hands now.

I really appreciate your time. Thank you.

Mike

[Gypsi]

It is what attempted robbing looked like in my apiary on a nuc and my weakest hive this evening. At least the pic is. Your video is private?

However, I had actual fighting going on. Between 6 and 7 pm, worker bees are returning to the hives too. Entrance reducers will allow a good defense.

The nuc has a robber screen, and a screen top that were confusing the daylights out of the robbers. Took one weed seed pod to block the only entrance on that screen. Sweet... Instant peace.

I plan on combining the pair - the nuc has the best queen - but am holding off to be sure that the queen I pick up in the morning and my queenless hot hive get along. Even then I may not kill the weak queen, as I have a late season cutout to do, and she does at least lay fairly well, and she's a lot better than no queen at all.

The weak 10 frame I had suited up anyway so I just reached over and rotated their entrance reducer to the 2 bee slot. I am pretty sure it was one of my stronger hives, the one across the street, doing the robbing. So I went over there and robbed them for a frame of brood and nurse bees and generally created mayhem.

My popularity rating isn't high this evening, but the bees are all sorting themselves out again.

I lose too much if I let a hive get robbed out needlessly.

Gypsi

[sfisher]

Thats exactly what a robbed video looks like.

[beesohappy]

I've seen robbing before at one of my outside apiaries when I left wet honey suppers out. There were tons of bees falling like softballs off the upper corners of the lid but these guys are in town and it only last for a short while were as the other times it was from sun up to sun down.

I used the bottom bars off a couple bad frames and reduced the entrance down to a 1'' or so and there's a 1'' hole drilled into the upper side of the hive body. In the morning it'll be business as usual but I worry about the heat were having, it's around 95+

[Seymore]

Can't open video - says it's private.

[mmmooretx]

Can't open video - says it's private.

Ditto.

[tommyt]

same here

Ditto.

[TokerM]

Someone robbed the video!!

[garyk1398]

It must be a "private" robbery, because i can't see it either!

[Gypsi]

Someone robbed the video!!

hahaha

[Kelbor]

I was just robbed 30 seconds of my life...I too dont have a video for evidence so Im leaving this message as proof.

[beesohappy]

Sorry guys thank you for the heads up I'll work on it when I get a chance and redo it somehow.




It should be working now.

[sfisher]

Im guessing orientation flights, robbing does'nt start and stop at the same time, it is also continuous it goes on all day.

[Seymore]

I'm clueless on the robbing thing but curious on the box thing. You said in Ta Da! Now Working Video that you saw no swarm cells but all your bees are in single hive bodies? Maybe they are screaming for more room.

[David LaFerney]

It's really hard to tell from your video, but the tell tale is that you will usually see fighting around the entrance if the hive being robbed is putting up a fight. If a weak/failing hive is being robbed then not so much. Another sign is that the loaded robbers will often climb up the hive to get more altitude before they take off.

[tabby]

FWIW, all of the hives here do something similar everyday between 4 and 5 pm. They start out normal and one by one they develop a large cloud of bees and then settle back down to normalcy. Each one has a cloud for about 1/2 hour and they are all settled down in about 1 hour. Don't know about your case, but in my case it's not robbing.

[G Barnett]

I usually try to get to my hives around 5 pm to see their orientation flights. This could be the case if it occurs routinely. Also, I was thinking it may be time to expand your hives. If they have all of their frames drawn out and filled, they may want to expand. Just my thoughts, but then again I am still learning!

[Mike Gillmore]

Robbing I have witnessed ends up being a constant ongoing action, not at just one short time period of the day like you are describing. The main thing, which we can't see in the video, is whether there is any wrestling or fighting going on at the entrance. If this occurs at the same general time every day I would guess it's just a heavy cycle of returning foragers and drones or orientation flights.

If these were swarms from spring they are probably very crowded by now in one single deep and need another box for expansion.

I'm having trouble trying to figure out what your intentions are with the nucs. If expansion is your goal right now, do splits and let them raise new queens or buy queens for the splits.

[Gypsi]

There is test robbing and there is serious robbing. Serious robbing starts at dawn and ends at dark. Test robbing is, gee is there an opening, if there is I'll go home and get my sisters.

This might be test, but I think it is just returning workers. And a small pile of dead bees a foot or 2 from the hives would be normal, mortuary bees remove bodies and dump them on the ground a bit away from the hive.

[David LaFerney]

Once you learn what it looks like you can instantly ID orientation. Orienting bees fly back and forth then in ever widening circles. Robbers often climb up the front of the hive then fly dirrectly away. Foragers just fly away. Also as mentioned, orientation only lasts a few minutes while robbing goes on continuously.