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He sets off robbing

PostPosted:02 Aug 2021, 20:00
by AdamD
I managed to mess up a nuc this Saturday by allowing robbing to occur. A lesson to all! (Never done this before. :cry:

I had opened the top of a demareed colony to steal a brood frame and mistakenly not put the crown board back on. This started the bees in the apiary getting excited and looking for the frames to rob. At a short distance the bees' round dance doesn't give any sense of direction so they were out hunting for the food I had left out for them. Whilst they were doing this I treated 4 nucs with apiguard with 1/2 tray each. The weakest of these had a just laying queen inside which I marked and closed up. By this time there were bees trying to get into every hive in the apiary so once I realised what I had done, I closed up the open hive and left them to it. I returned later in the day to see the weak nu being robbed 'like mad' with a cluster of bees outside it. I couldn't do much at the time so left them until 8 pm.
At 8, the bees were still clustered outside the hive and I gently lifted the roof off to revel no stores at all and no bees. They were all outside! I jolted the bees into a polynuc, noticed the white dot of the queen and added a couple of frames and sealed them up. I then found a frame with some sealed brood and stroes and took them all to a seperate location where I installed the brood frame and left them to it. There is a good chance they will make a good recovery.

The robbed out nuc remains - so any robbers realise that it is now empty and won't return. If I had removed it, the robbers would have found it gone and looked around for the nuc - and found another one to go for.

So it IS possible to start robbing in an apiary! I now have the T shirt!

Re: He sets of robbing

PostPosted:02 Aug 2021, 20:45
by Steve 1972
Yes it can start robbing.. got the tea shirt.. :D ..
Not with this but I did a blooper 2wks ago..i had a stack of eight extracted supers in a sealed stack..i shook a colony out and put a nearly full uncapped super on top of the stack..Duh i did not put the roof on properly..2hrs later i noticed the problem and took the roof of..dear lord it was like opening a double brood box up..bees everywhere and the stack was jammed solid with bees..1hr later and enough smoke to kill a fire i eventually cleared the bees from the supers ..lesson learned

Re: He sets off robbing

PostPosted:08 Aug 2021, 09:52
by Spike
The books say to not spill syrup for the same reason.