Robbing Behavior, Prevention and Treatment
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- Опубликовано: 31 окт 2015
- Just like all other creatures on the planet, honey bees will also take advantage of ways to easily get their next meal, especially when there is no food in the field, such as nectar producing flowers. Bees will rob from other hives when there is no nectar flow, in cases where a hive is vulnerable, weak or queenless. All of those things can be helped by good beekeeping. When the first taste of fall is in the air you should close your hives down so that they have a smaller area to defend against robbing bees, hornets and wasps. This would address a hive's vulnerability. This also helps hives that are weak more efficiently defend their hive. Queenless hives can be given a queen, queen cell, or even a frame of eggs to allow them to raise another queen. However, if drones have already been kicked out of the hive you will have to settle for purchasing a mated queen or uniting with a queen right hive.
In many cases, the beekeeper is responsible for creating a situation where honey bees focus on robbing. Placing a common syrup can, wet honey supers, capping, etc. in order for the bees to "clean up" create a situation where the bees become prone to robbing. Just this act alone creates a situation where honeybees from many different hives (both yours and others) come into close proximity which causes disease transmission, varroa mite transfer between hives and overall aggressive behavior from honey bees. This contributes to the problem of CCD. Also, it is a misnomer that setting out "feed" (i.e. cappings or wet honey supers, sugar syrup) will allow hives that are light with honey going into winter to gain more weight. In fact, strong hives become heavier and lighter, weaker hives become weaker. Once the "feed" is gone, strong hives will turn their attention to weak hives and start robbing them!
Hives that are being robbed, depending on the severity, will become very defensive and will sting more readily, become weaker because of the battle going on at the entrance and if left unchecked will eventually perish. If the entire yard has been frenzied into robbing, the entire yard will become defensive.
Putting out common feed for bees also attracts wasps and hornets, beetles and wax moths, mice, skunks, etc. This can also contribute to hives dying in the winter months because these other insects will also start to rob from your hives.
Prevention of robbing is key. First, don't ever put feed containers out for all the hives. Second, feed your hives, if necessary only, using a method that won't attract bees from other hives (can of syrup over the inner cover or a sugar patty on the top bars). Third, make all your hives defensible by reducing the entrances. Fourth, take notice of your hives and when robbing is observed take steps to stop it (i.e. reduce the entrance further, use a robbing screen, or in dire situations remove the hive to a secluded location and take steps to increase their strength, such as giving them resources including brood from a strong hive). Also, if the hive is too weak, take off unused hive bodies to further reduce the area they need to take care of.
Signs of robbing include bees that are darting back and forth in front of the hive or bees that are flying erratically around the hive looking for a crack or hole in the hive to enter through. Unsightly buildup of wax particles on the entrance, or areas that are dirty with wax and honey at a secondary entrance (either in hive design or because the hive equipment is not tight) indicate that battles have taken place between hive occupants and robbers. If you open the hive and notice a lot of wax buildup (loose) on the bottom board this can also be a sign the hive is being robbed out.
It is my hope that by showing robber behavior in this video it will help you to become more aware of the behavior characteristics that robbing bees exhibit, and the pattern of destruction that inciting your hives to rob (by placing out feed) can lead to. I hope the video is informative! 
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That was the BEST advice! I, as a brand new beekeeper with one hive, am learning as I go and you have taught me a lot.
You're the 1st person to explain & show what robber bees do & their activity. TY
This is the most informative video on robbing I've seen yet! I've had a heartbreaking day wth this, my hive was weak to begin with, queen died probably a few days ago, discovered this today and when I got home from getting a new queen, there were about 100 bees left in the hive. Fort Knox is going up tomorrow and hope I save them. Thank you so much for the information!!!!
Sorry to hear about that! Hopefully they'll pull through!
Your videos are fantastic and probably the most instructive out there. Thanks for zooming in, slowing down, and pointing out what to look for!
Thank you for the kind words!
Great video! I'm new beekeeper...this really explains robbing behavior. thanks! Subscribed.
This is a very good video. I really like the instant replays. It helps you understand the mechanics of the situation. Good job. Audio is fine now
I’m a first your beekeeper I have two hives and one was under attack today both hives have plenty of honey for the winter,, your video was very helpful I close their entrance down and will finish tomorrow Thank you
Amazing!!!!! All that wonderful goodness for our health and bodies just from their little tiny bodies.
This is a very helpful! We are new beekeepers and to be able to see examples like this is so informative. Keep up the good work!
Thank You!
Plz fix the sound
Atleast in the begining
That was real helpful for me. Thank you for taking the time to make the video. I appreciate it.
Thank You!
I have watched as many robbing videos as I have been able to find in the last week and can say this one is the most informative. Wished I had known this information earlier and maybe I could have saved my hive.
+Cheryl Alford Thanks Cheryl, I appreciate the feedback! It seems everything in beekeeping is a lesson, so keep going strong!
fantastic video, thank you from a keen enthusiast now researching bee keeping. This may seem like a novice question, but why not leave the robber screen on the hive at all times? would it simply slow the production of your hive? thanks again for all your videos, no doubt I'll have many more questions for you before long.
Thank you. Sure enough I have a robbing situation. Now I know what it is and what I can do!
Very helpful video-thank you! I wish I would have seen it a few weeks ago when the robbing started but now know for the future.
Thanks. I'm glad it helped!
Very informative. Many thanks!
Thank you for the video. Your is the best on robbing subject.
To see full blown robbing is scary. I tried everything to stop it. Threw a wet sheet over the hive, fine mist of water but nothing would stop it. We were in the midst of a dearth when it took place. I had another hive right next to it and I scrambled to throw together a robbing screen because I could see they were starting on that hive too. Fortunately it thwarted the robbers and i came thru with a very strong hive going into winter. Unfortunately, the bees of the robbed hive abandoned the hive. This year I will be more prepared and aware. Love your videos, very informative.
Thanks for the feedback, and I'm sorry to hear about that one hive. From now on, you will recognize it though, so it wasn't all in vain!
Well, I thought the bee who belong to the hive working all day long to bring pollen back and forward. If I have to keep it close how do they get back home ?
Great video on robbing. I use hive top feeders that I have covered with screen - initially to stop drowning bees - and wonder if you consider that feeder fully protected. Bees can get underneath the plastic lid, but they cannot get to the deed...
I'd have to see it to know for sure, but if bees can get a whiff of the syrup, that is what creates the conditions for robbing. If the hive weakens then robbing would occur faster than usual. But, if you don't have a problem with robbing, just keep an eye out.
I screened my top hive feeders to stop drowning also. They should sell them with the screen already installed.
I might add that it does not stop robbing.
Can't hear you
Great information as always, thanks.
Do you sometimes feed syrup in pail sitting on the inner cover all through winter? No moisture problems?
First off, vert good video and explanation. Your videos are always informative.
How much is the space between the hive body and the wooden frame where the screen attaches for that robber screen. I want to make sure that the bees can pass it. Or in other words how much space do I need so that the bees can pass that frame.
I would like to build one.
Thank you.
Hi, it is about 3/4" or so.
Thank you again.
This video is amazing! I am edit honey related issues video in Taiwan. Can I use this video for teaching purposes?
just visited my hives and one is being severely robbed. Thank you for this....
Your Welcome...hope it helped!
that hive succumbed.. it was too weak. We moved it out of the apiary, so the robbers went after our stronger hive. I was able to place 2 wet sheets over it, and smoke the robbers..... the thugs seemed to leave, I will keep a watch on this one closely.. thanks again!
That's too bad, sorry to hear.
Thank you for the great video and the information, now I know what to watch out for since I'm new to beekeeping:)
Thank you!
Honey Bee Honey you're welcome
what’s washboard movement? thank you!
Sorry, could not hear you. Moving on to other videos with better audio.
Thanks for sharing! Where are you located?
If you change and reduce the entrance a lot, and then quickly the behavior and activity in front drops a lot is that by itself indicative of robbing?
And could you use towels, wet or dry hanging over hives to mask scents of sugarwater, honey, etc on the inside somehow to help prevent this?
I sometimes have a hard time telling the difference between mating flight behavior and robbing. And if a hive is really booming say in the afternoon with a lot of bees this is hard to discern from the others for me still.
Hi Noah, robbing behavior is very different. The bees fly a lot faster, with a lot of purpose. They dart in and out, sometimes you will see a guard confronting them and they take off, but once they start coming in with a lot of force, they land on the entrance, stand there and flap their wings in an upright posture then walk in. You will also see a buildup of wax and honey where they are robbing, at whatever entrance or all of them. It looks messy and is a little sticky. Also, when you go into the hive, it is pretty chaotic, but an easy way to check is to find a honey frame and see what the comb looks like. If it is even and still looks normal, that's good. Robbed out combs are very uneven and jagged with a lot of pieces of wax and/or granules of honey. The bottom board will also have a lot of bits of wax and such as the colony cannot clean it up. Hope that helps.
@@honeybeehoney6132 Thanks!
After extracting the honey what do you do with the frames? You say it’s bad to leave them out to be cleaned up.
Store them somewhere. This keeps wax moth from invading them as long as there has never been brood in the supers, and it draws the bees up into the supers next spring.
Your videos are so helpful, but please, can you fix the sound. Even at 100% I couldn't hear a word when you were outside by the hive.
Barely could hear you. But if you close with the screen how come your own bee can get back ?
Every other neighbor around us have hummingbird feeders so I guess we are doomed to have robber bees...
great video
Can any one here help me in a situation of queen less hive protection. As i lost one of my queen.
What if you end up trapping many of the robbers inside once you add the screen?
I actually had to do this, I could not stop the robbing even with the screen and in desperation closed the hive up. After 3 days, I opened it to find my bees and the robbers happily playing house together and they have done fine.
To Diego vD, sorry, there is no reply button so I have to answer your question with a general comment. Switzerland...wow. Wish I could go there!
To answer your question: I watched the video that you sent and I have seen a couple of his videos before. I remember him saying that it is important to take honey out of the brood chamber in order to leave room for production of winter bees. It is also important to say that my climate and his are very different. I would guess that my climate and your are closer because of the winters. In my area it is illegal to feed sugar syrup to a hive that also has honey supers on because of the risk of adulterated honey.
My first answer would be to prevent the need to feed in the first place, i.e. don't ever pull honey out of the brood chamber. If a hive becomes honey bound in the spring then you can pull some out and replace with pulled comb. However, after the honey crop is harvested, never pull honey out of the hives and have a designated area that is the brood chamber (for me it is two deeps). As to the syrup fountain...I think it invites problems. First thing is that you can tell that the bees are in close proximity to each other. Every beekeeper wants to believe "his" bees are healthy...except that this isn't the case. In most situations, the beekeeper learns about disease, or varroa after symptoms have showed up, which also means that bacterial and viral infections are contagious. Varroa are always present and have been known to switch bees in order to spread out and multiply! Having bees this close and fighting with each other is an invitation to contagion spread. Despite that "Don" claims his bees aren't robbing, he is correct...until he stops feeding. Unless there is a very strong honey flow, those foragers will turn to other hives. Also, despite those claims...sugar syrup open in the field does attract hornets, wasps, Assassin bugs, beetles and mice. Also, any wax, honey, or syrup attracts wax moths which aren't a threat to healthy hives, but weak hives may find defending against them troublesome to say the least.
When I have hives robbing such as in my video, I shut all the entrances down to defensible areas, about 1 to 2 inches. I shut rear or upper entrances on affected hives and apply the robber screen. I feed any weak hive sugar syrup through a can with tiny holes in the lid, turned upside down, on top of the bee escape hole. If needed the bees can actually cluster right underneath the can, which keeps it warm enough to stop it from freezing, and when feeding I open the rear entrance (which is just a 3/4" opening) to remove excess moisture from the hive. It is possible to feed every hive, but extremely time consuming and in my opinion not necessary. But, if I were to feed all hives I would probably make fondant to put on top of the top bars of every hive.
I'll definitely boost the volume on my future videos. Thanks for the feedback. I hope I answered your questions, but if not just let me know! Have a good night. I envy you, living in Switzerland!!
+Honey Bee Honey
Hello Keith,
Thank you very much for your reply. You did answer my questions, and you even added several great pointers, especially about leaving undisturbed the honey in the brood chambers according to cold climate conditions.
I do appreciate you taking the time to write back.
As a side note, we only use top feeders here, never entrance feeders or open outdoor feeders. Internal frame feeders are pretty uncommon here as well.
Every country has pro's and con's, so until you haven't lived in a country you don't know about the con's. I lived (grew up mostly) in 6, so yes, I would not leave my country for another right now. Generally speaking, any country that has political, economic, and weather stability is already on the top list. The only thing you could envy Switzerland about (going back to beekeeping now) is that we don't have hive beetles yet, but they are present in Italy. So it's just a question of time.
Have a great weekend, and thank you again for your instructive videos and comments.
Wishing you all the best, Diego.
Diego vD I agree with you 100%. I don't have small hive beetle's either, yet, but the political climate is absolutely awful over here! And although I live by the Rocky Mountains, which are very beautiful, there seems to be nothing like the Swiss Alps! You have a great weekend. By the way, I am going to make a video asking for viewer ideas on subjects to cover, so if you have any ideas...let me know. Thanks for the correspondence.
Very helpful.
Are the robber bees from your other hives? Is it better to just have one hive in the yard? Or are they bees from other hives (not yours)?
All of the above. If you watch close you can see a robber leave the hive they are robbing and go back to their own hive, but whether or not it is bees in the same apiary...if a hive is in trouble, robbers will find it, whether or not they are in the same apiary!
Loved the video however the sound was difficult. I have subscribed :)
great video!!! THANKS!
By the way the sound was fine....they need to turn there volume up or get a decent phone
Care to show us how to make robber screens? TY
Robber screens are basically a U shaped frame with a screen in front. When placed on the hive it creates an screen in front of the hive, with a gap above. Bees within the hive crawl up and learn to get out and back in through the top opening, but robber bees are attracted to the smell, which is emanating from the front of the hive, through the screen. Of course, they can't get through.
hey if you going to show a video turn the sound up Grrr
just move on in video...sound is good
You need to turn up the volume on the video.
One mistake i also see is the hives are all the same color. There suppose to be different so the other bee dont go to the wrong hive.
Bees orient on a location, though I have heard this argument before, I have a lot of hives that still have bees in them.
Great video! thank You.
Thank You!
sound starts at 1:50
Good info, thanks.
+Terri Bowman Thanks for the feedback!
Hi, can I ask... how do you know the bees are “nectar laden”? I saw another video and the fella said “you can see they’re bringing pollen in and that’s a good sign”, but didn’t actually show what he was talking about. It just looks like bees going in and out. Sorry, a newb. Thanks though, watching this showed me my hive isn’t being robbed.👍
@Paul.... hi. I'm a relative newb. Just starting my 2nd hive from a swarm and hopefully they will survive this spring here in Denver. I didn't provide any food.... and now it's been cold the last few days. But today sun came out and I've been watching and wondering if I'm seeing erratic beehavior--robbing? How could, they've only been here just about a week and not great weather to build? Anyway, based on my limited knowledge, I believe you tell if 'nectar laden' when you see yellow 'balls' on the back end of their body.... the yellow is pollen. THat is what i think. Best wishes! Sid
Sid o'connell thanks. I’ve managed to work that out. And my hive was being robbed! I closed it up, put a sheet over and everything is fine. My bees have nice capped stores as we go into winter here, in Australia. Thanks for helping though.
Hello, thank you for your videos. I have watched them all. This is my first year of beekeeping and your videos are very informative. Please keep going ;)
If I may, I sometimes have problems hearing you, even with all sound settings at 100%, could you please try to UP the volume, or normalize it when editing, so we can hear you better? Thank you very much!
One question: if one is to use the honey from the bees as a commercial mean, how do you manage giving syrup throught out the year? You probably know about "Don the Fat Bee Man". In one of his videos (ruclips.net/video/D4m5qrwtwNM/видео.html) he is feeding his yard bees with a syrup fountain. Then, he is more in the business of selling queens and nucs, not honey. If more than one hive in your yard is robbing another hive, would you set up such a syrup fountain in order to feed them? Or would it be against commercial rules? Of course, doing that after the honey harvest for selling, would only be in order to sustain the bees for preparing for winter, with little to no effect on the commercial quality of the honey. Am I right? Sorry, English is not my mother's tongue. Thank you again and best regards, Diego, from Switzerland.
I guess I need to use amplifying headphones if i want to hear you?
Thanks anyway. Good luck.
music blasted and cant hear you
Great Video! Hard to hear you speak though....
Thanks...I have since fixed the sound problems with future videos, but it took a while especially since most people can hear it, though certainly some people have had problems. I switched mic's since then.
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what up with the no sound
heard the music loud and clear... just cant hear the words you speak...
Can't hear during critical comments. Too bad.
What? Hard to hear you, homeboy.
Poor sound
Can't hear you
Can't hear!
Cant hear you
Is this guy talking?
(y)
Dude I can't hear you. When you edit your video you need to normalize the sound. :(
ok it looks like one of my hives (strong) is passively robbing the one next to it (weak no queen couple of cells). They are just flying to the front door and walking in, coming out fly a foot and back a their hive. I'm wondering instead of a large opening at top should I make an opening about the size of single opening on reducer? Or should I try to combine them? BTW I'm a new beekeeper. Thanks
I would definitely shut down all entrances to as small as can be. You can screen the upper entrance with hardware cloth so that they still have ventilation but can't be robbed through it. Robbing screens work well for the front entrance. At times in beekeeping magazines I have seen it advised to put a screen on the front instead of a door...which I think is a bad idea because robbers still collect on the screen, and eventually get in. If you can, move the hive until they have a queen and can defend themselves.
wow really loud classical music. You on mute.
I’m
We can't hear you, do it right
Who's we? No one else has complained about the volume on this video. I had a viewer on another video that couldn't hear with headphones on but after switching to the speakers and turning up the master volume...no problem. Try that.
@@honeybeehoney6132 we...all of us. I saw you respond to another person about fixing your audio. Instead of worrying about your mic, you and fix it during editing. You are adjusting video speed, but you don't edit the sound.
You need to get your butt back to making videos...get on it :)
There is no sound at all.