Robbing Honeybee Behavior
At first, I thought my
weak hive had remarkably grown stronger. Then I realized I was
watching a full scale battle --- a stronger hive had decided to rob the
weaker hive.
Robbing is a honeybee behavior most prevalent among Italian bees during
a nectar dearth. Our strong hives have hundreds (thousands?) of
worker bees who just a few days ago were out collecting pollen and
nectar from the late summer flowers. Suddenly, the ragweed
stopped blooming and nothing else filled in the gap. Who can
blame these out of work bees for stealing honey from their weaker
neighbors?
At first, Mark and I were just going to let nature take its
course. That weak hive has been on its last legs for a month, and
I don't think they're worth babying through the winter. (In fact,
I'm a little surprised they had any honey to be robbed!) But then
the robbing swarm moved on to our second weakest hive, which I actually
consider a pretty strong hive. I slapped on gloves and a veil and
smashed entrance reducers in all four hives.
Now, only a bee at a time can go in and out of our hives. This
makes it a lot easier for the robbed hives to fight off the marauders,
but I'll have to be vigilant and take the reducers out if we get
another honeyflow.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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