[Nathaniel]

Due to my being so interested in top bar hives, I have ignorantly badly neglected my langstroff' hives. I went out and saw that one of my hives was being robbed, and I added a reducer. I looked inside and they had this hive out, honey and pollen. Any advice on what to do next and how to help them would be appreciated. It is my first year now, so be gentle (smile). Everybody can now have a good laugh

.

I am trying to put up a 4 tear web site, now being in the first stage of Alzheimer's, this can be a challenge. I know nothing about putting up a web site, and there is only a rough draft of the first tear, and this tear has nothing to do with bees, that is the second tear, which will be about top bar hives. As slow as I am, that may take a while, and I wish to link to this site, if they will let me. I wish to link here, for I think this is one of the best sites on the Web. If anyone, which I doubt, wishes to take a first look at my rough drsft with nothing else there, chat room soon but not about bees, that's why I wish to link here, so they can have a chat room about bees. Well here is my pitiful excuse

http://64.89.103.81:7787/
Nathaniel

[This message has been edited by Nathaniel (edited July 24, 2004).]

 

[oregonsparkie]

Thats a pretty good looking web site. When you get all the pages finished I will certainly use it.

Keep up the good work..

 

[Nathaniel]

Thank you sir, it is a little rough but it will be smoothed out some anyway. I will be taking my time ( have to with my lack of experance ).
I am now writing 3 more articles and putting a chat room and meeting place for folks to meet and get togather. Hopefully get a lot of candles lit.
Nathaniel

 

[Michael Bush]

Robbing:
Sometimes during a dearth the strong hives will rob the weak ones. Italians are particularly bad about this. Feeding seems to make this worse or sometimes set it off. Prevention is best. When you see that a dearth is setting in, reduce the entrances on all the hives. This will slow them all down some. But you need to have an eye on them to see that the dearth is over and open them back up during a flow. If you already have robbing occurring, here are some ways to stop it. A really weak hive can be closed up with some #8 hardware cloth for a day or two. The robbers can’t get in and eventually get tired of trying. After you open back up be sure to reduce the entrance. Another variety of this is to stop up the entrance with grass. The bees will eventually remove it, but hopefully the robbers will give up before then. A “robber screen” can be built from scratch or from a screen door from Brushy Mt. It is a screen that covers the area around the door and has an opening in the top (you will have to make the whole affair or cut a notch in the wood of Brushy Mountain’s screen door to make an entrance on the top.) This forces the robbers to turn a couple of corners to find their way in. Since they seem to go by smell this confuses them. It also stops skunks. Vicks Vaporub around the entrance will also confuse the robbers because they can’t smell the hive. It does not confuse the bees that live there. A weak hive will sometimes get totally robbed out so there is not a drop of honey left. They will quickly starve. You can give them frames of honey from the strong hive to keep them from starving. If you can’t control the robbing it’s better to combine some of the weak hives than let them get robbed out and starve. If you only have one strong and one weak, you can steal some emerging brood from the strong hive to boost the weak hive and shake off some nurse bees (the ones on the open brood) from the strong hive in the weak hive. Or you can just combine the weak with the strong. It’s better than all the fighting and starving.

My first step would be to give them some frames of honey, block the entrance (after dark) so the robbers break their habit and, while you're at it, equalize. Take some emerging brood complete with bees from the strong robber hive and give it to the weaker hive that's being robbed.

If this fails you can consider what you want to do next. Perhaps combine the weak one with another weak one to give them more strength or with a strong one just to get rid of the problem.

 

[cityboy]

I recently threw a damp sheet over the hive. The sheet stayed on for a day. The robbing ended. Mike

 

[Nathaniel]

Gentlemen
I certainly do appreciate your replies and I will be making a screen tomorrow. I am going to look on this site and see if I can find some plans, and it's not, I will see what one looks like and build from there.
Michael
I certainly do appreciate you explaining things in the detail that you did. I know that was a lot of typing but sometimes explaining things to people as dense as I am, it is necessary

. Now, if you could go into that great of detail on how to build a web site, I would have it made.

.
Nathaniel

 

[Michael Bush]

Just imagine you are trying to build a screen that leaves the entrance open and makes a screened area out from the front of the hive. The part that goes against the hive can be made of one by (one by one or one by two) and has three sides against the hive. Cover this with the #8 hardward cloth. The piece across the entrance is nailed into that frame so it sets 3/4" in front of the other frame parts. This leaves the entrance open to the screened area but blocks the actual entrance. A notch somewhere on the top piece makes the ACTUAL entrance. So it's only four pieces of wood and some screen. The only crtical dimension is the width needs to block the entrance.