Honey Bees Getting Robbed, How to STOP that, and how to combine two weak colonies with news print.
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- Опубліковано 25 чер 2020
- In this video we visit the backyard apiary and notice a landing board that is in trouble. Signs of robbing and how to stop it.
After that, a hive investigation to see why the colony was weak in the first place, making it prone to being robbed out.
If a colony is weak or queenless, we go through how to combine to small colonies into one more functional super organism.
I stop the robbing with a robbing screen that is designed by BeeSmart Designs: amzn.to/3i2KSiC
For Hive Inspections, I use 1:1 sugar syrup with 2 tsp/pint of honey-b-healthy: (great for those hot dry days) amzn.to/2AbOmhM
Copper mesh has many uses, here is the one I use: amzn.to/3f968AA
My weekly question and answer video will post during the weekend. Thank you very much for your patience.
As an Amazon affiliate we benefit from qualifying purchases.
Visit Fred's Website Here: www.fredsfinefowl.com/thewayto...
If you want a flow-hive please avoid fakes, here is the real deal at $50.00 off: mbsy.co/honeyflow/29307941
AU - mbsy.co/zSDf9
EU - mbsy.co/zSDbm
For those asking about the newsprint I use, here is a link: amzn.to/2NwMlzM
I also use it for dry sugar feeding in winter.
Absolutely mind blown by the amount of resource and info you're putting out there for everyone Fred. You're amazing. Thank you so much!
Wow, thank you!
I agree! Thank you
lieboen @a
Agreed! Thank you Fred
I expierenced a robbing of my hives recently. After I did quick inspection and determined they had been queenless for over a week I closed up the hive robbers and all for 2 days and fed sugar water. Then moved them to the other side of my property 1/4 mile and gave them a new queen. They bounced back extremely well!
You gave them a new queen that is why...usually quinless colonies are doomed.
I just covered mine with a white sheet, wondering how long to leave it.
I don't know why this ended up in my recommendations but it's fascinating! I could listen to you talk all day long.
Thank you Donna!
This has to be THE single best photographed channel on bee keeping on the entirety of youtube. Your camera work is great and I really appreciate the extra effort you put into composing your shots to be balanced, well exposed and crisply focused. What makes it even better is the use of macro lenses to really get to see the bees up close. Excellent stuff, m8.
Wow, thanks!
big boss bob ross Can you tell us more about the issue with open larvae ?
I have zero interest in bee keeping and yet I cannot look away, this is incredibly interesting, informative and your voice
arration is National Geographic worthy. Very cool....
Wow, thank you :)
If you're a fisherman, try wax worms for panfish. Sold where you often find ice fishing supplies packed in sawdust.
Any beekeeper worth their salt keeps a few containers in their refrigerator in case they get a day off in January.
Edit: A parasitic pest for some, 5 cents each for others.
But beekeepers supply stores with bait guaranteed to be effective.
Just did this same thing two weeks ago. I had ordered two mated Weaver queens, but UPS delivery was delayed. One queen was not marked and under-mated with dead bees in the cage. I tried to direct release, but she flew off never to return. Five days later I combined the queenless bees with my lowest in numbers hive. Happy now with two Carniolan-queened hives and one Weaver hive. This whole re-queening Africanized hives has been quite an experience. I'm glad you recommended the Weaver queens, but with the awful delivery between Houston area to South New Mexico, I will not try that again. The Carniolans came from Lappe's bees of Iowa.
DANG... seeing a Weaver Queen fly off on her own would be sooooooo coffee-cup-dropping terrible!!! (';')... had they been feeding her through the screen before you opened her up? so frustrating but I'm glad you've found a suitable queen for your bees. We currently have storms and rain, so my incoming queen should be nice and cool in transit. Hot weather can partially sterilize a new queen in transit and that's a huge downer.... BUT, you can requeen with the brood she does produce.
I have had to requeen a aggressive africanized hive before. It was my nightmare last year. They would chase me legit two miles from the hive down my driveway.
I am excited to see how they do with a mated queen! The video of the robbing was very interesting....especially when you slowed it down.
Thank you and I'll be sharing their progress and hope they come out like champs :)
@@FrederickDunn Yes, I am so disappointed when I don't see the ending. Even if you believe it is boring.
Ahhhh... gotta get some robbing screens! Yes - that awful sound of a hive being robbed... 'bee pandemonium'. A few years back I inadvertently and foolishly left my spun out frames too close to the original hive to get cleaned out. (Thinking like a human and that this would be a good thing for them to do... and also I thought that 100 feet or so would be far enough away....) Well, I invited a massive 'bee war' that followed the honey scent back to the hive (ok... anything and everything was flying around the whole area... wasps... bees... you name it...)... and not only did they rob the hive - I ended up with a heap of dead bees and no hive left. A very costly mistake.
Okay so as someone who isnt a beekeeper... What is a spun out frame
@@KillerofGods - Great question. It is what I call honey frames full of honey that were spun 'out' in a honey extractor ... (uncapped and emptied out of the honey into waiting buckets ) ... but still had some bits of honey drippings left in the comb/ deep frames. This scent was the same scent from where the still full frames were in the nearby hives for winter food. Hope that explains things ~
You're helping the next generation of beekeepers! Thanks for such useful information!
Thank you so much!
As a "returning" bee keeper, I was a beekeeper late '70's to mid 90's in
NJ then PA, I've had some catching up to do on newfangled equipment,
new pests and techniques. I want to say THANKS! You are doing the
hobby a great service in the highest degree (I don't even think that
statement covers it). I find your video Q&A's extremely thorough and
equally informative. With UA-cam I can watch during breakfast, pause,
lunch and finish when I have the time. I love the index so I can skip
some basic knowledge I remember well. After the first Q&A I watched
I went back to day 1 and scrolled to "yellow jacket raid" and began my
catch up on beekeeping. I "lost" my apiary (small hobbyist 6 hives) to
bears in '95 and never started another hive. I've carted 2 1/2 complete
hives of now vintage wood with me for 20+ years. It was put some of
this wood together or sell it. A swarm landed in the tree of my home in
Buffalo NY (nearly downtown) a few years ago... in the city?? I was
blown away and also mad that I had no equipment put together to give
them a home. In the past few years I researched new bee lines,
especially the Russian bees and then the Sazkatraz line was available. 5
days ago I installed my first Saskatraz bees. The Queen died in her
cage before she was released, another is on her way. As you know it
never gets boring keeping bees. Thanks again Chuck T Buffalo NY
Should you read this could you produce a coffee mug with a standard langstroth hive? Or perhaps the artwork from your hive bodies.
I'm glad you have come full circle and are back to keeping bees! Thank you for sharing your story!
Dear Frederick, Once again a most fascinating and absorbing episode of beekeeping. I would never have known there was such a phenomenon as robbing a colony. What was equally interesting was your analysis of the two colonies, how you combined them, and the addition of a new queen in a few days. I pray your reconstituted colony thrives and becomes a strong and productive colony. Sincerely, Larry, Canada.
Thank you Larry :) and today I was invited to collect a swarm, so the spot is now occupied again.
Amazing video, Fred has taught me more about beekeeping in the past few weeks than a decade of trial and error. Western New York can be tricky for a beekeeper.
Wow, thank you :)
What part? I’m from Buffalo, living in MD rn
I started off watching a raccoon eating and now I’ve ended up here. This is the beauty of youtube, a great suggestion! I’m fascinated by bees and admit that I didn’t know this even happened. So, I’m here to learn! Thank you for your great work!
Awesome! Thank you!
Was it the raccoon with the cotton candy?
Between your exceptional informative videos and a local friend who is giving me hands on experience I've decided to start beekeeping! Thanks for your hard work! If increasing interest in bee keeping is a focus point for your efforts I'd say you are succeeding remarkably.
So nice of you
I'm sure you get this a lot, but you're like the Bob Ross of beekeeping. I just found you today, and I'm hooked!
Thank Fred for this really cool experience. Without this, i would not have noticed what robbing activity would look like.
Mr Dunn has the most pleasant speaking style and is the best at giving worthwhile information in a very interesting manner. thank you.
So nice of you
I was robbed by bees once. They stung me $8.00 for a small jar of honey!
It’s a bit like the Black Friday sales at Walmart 😳
That's no lie!
Not just Friday when blacks are involved! Looks more like a store in Minnesota!
@@maskettaman1488 blm?? bees looting mad? :)
Folks, I know you are joking but Black Friday has nothing to do with race! Remember these posts will be here years from now.
@@julieenslow5915 there is no inference of race other than your own perceived conclusion, the term Black Friday was used to describe the chaos surrounding the hyped up selling events sending people into ridiculous behaviour to buy goods. Are you trying to virtue signal by turning this into a race debate ? My point was nothing of the sort and Black Friday sales have never been about race !
Perfect timing for me to watch this video . I will be doing this tomorrow and this gave me a little help on what to do .
Thanks for the video
Glad it helped!
Magnificent videos. I'm not a bee keeper, but I am fascinated by bees so I greatly appreciate the three videos of yours I have watched so far.
Great video Fred showing a newspaper combine. I did one of those earlier this year because the hive was weak. So I took bees from a huge colony and gave them a boost. It works flawlessly to combine that way. I had no issues.
Thanks Carlos... yep, extremely simple to do. Always great to see your comments!
I enjoyed your video! It was very educational and informative. I love how you showed slow motion the robbing activity. You have a wonderful voice too!! Clear and concise, you don't talk too fast, you explain in plain english. Thanks!
I really enjoy your narrated observation! thank you again for putting them out here! Your videos are amazing! So educational, so fascinating and I especially love the real time pace of it. ! I actually came to honey bees reading up on eusociality and then youtube suggested me your channel, but now I definately need to know everything about bees and beekeeping
That was really cool Fred.
Great portrayal of landing board activity! I have a queenless hive that was full of drone brood and I chose not to fuse it with it with another hive so as not to load another hive full of drones useless, resource consuming drones. Eventually my other hives started a robbing frenzy like what is shown in this video. Given that the weak hive is now full of drones (about 50/50 population) I still don't want to dump them into another hive and am at a loss as how to deal with the situation.
They are not likely to feed all of those drones, and I think you'll see the drone numbers fall off quick. Drones are the great vagabonds of the honey bee world, they tend to go to any hive where they are cared for.
I learned the hard way to always keep a couple nuc's ready to go. Great pictures and info
Extremely helpful thank you so much. We've gone from 1 to 3 backyard hives in 10 days after swarming But I'm not so sure about the activity around the hives. This has been good to watch.
Glad it helped!
Great job. We need to Index all of these. You are such an invaluable resource. Thank you.
Thank you so much! :) and yes... I do need some sort of master list. It's a time management thing...
Totally agree with Zerkbern, Fred your vids provide an amazing chronicle of your day to day observations of hive activity and bee behaviour as well as practical solutions.
Yes, looter bees or pirate bees.
This was the most helpful and educational beekeeping video I’ve ever seen! Thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Wonderful Fred… a gr8 study, close up! Thanks for all your work. Another good use of equipment during a non commercial period.
Glad you enjoyed it, John!
Thanks. Our flow just started Here in Minnesota
This video was very informative. Thank you.
Glad I've found this. I wasn't sure. Went out this a.m. About 9:15, approx. 52 degrees, at entrance saw mass of bees at entrance, never see bees this active, this early. At first, I thought orientation flight? Never this early before before sun has brightened up. Watched, waited, bees noisy, really fast entrance, fast exit, bees just hanging on hive, on legs, etc. trying the upper vent..... Covered with white sheet, now the bees are on outside of it. Inside feeder. Sept. 30th.
Glad you are being vigilant. Things can happen very fast.
wow this is as perfect as a video can get thamk you mr dunn!!!!! i love your vids
Your videos are very helpful. We have a small local apiary and enjoy it but sometimes the problems can cross one’s eyes! We like to ultimately try to think like bees and let bees do what they would do but a step in the right direction always helps. Thanks!
So nice of you, thanks!
Awesome shots ...I love it !
Thanks a lot!
Very informative. Thank you for making these videos. Your work is top-notch. 🍻
Glad you like them! Thanks Ryan!
This video was fascinating and very informative. The robbing sequences were so captivating. Thank you!
You're very welcome
Excellent video as usual. I have had problems with robbing in the past and appreciate very much your information. Will be prepared for the next time. God bless you.
Glad it was helpful!
Another awesome video! Thanks Fred!
My pleasure!
Fred that was put together very nice thank you
Your channel, work and efforts are amazing!
Thank you very much!
Still catching up on all your old videos. Need to do exactly what your video showed . Lost my queen . Combining my colonies .
Thanks you for the video
Wow, bees are so smart and hardworking.
I look forward to seeing how they go with a new queen and hopefully they accept her quickly.
fingers crossed... and the new queen is inbound! We just may salvage them :)
@@FrederickDunn A new queen will be accepted easily with a lower colony number.
Wish I'd watched this 2 days ago.. Thanks dude.
Well explained! Thanks for the video
Thanks for watching!
Great video, Fred! Please keep us updated! :)
Will do! And the good news is that I just received a swarm collection call, so I will be putting the swarm in a new box where the other one was just removed. It's a charmed life :)
I just want to say thank you so much for your videos. I'm not a beekeeper, but I have a horrible phobia of wasps specifically. I use your videos to help with my treatment and to show myself that not everything with wings and a stinger is bad, and often can be quite nice and lovely. I'm also interested in getting into this as a hobby once I progress a bit more!
Thank you, I'm so glad to know that I may be helping with your stress levels. Knowledge never hurts :)
Wasps stings are whimpey compared to honey bees .
For me
Yellow jackets barely hurt .
White faced hornets hurt for about ten min
Bees hurt a lot more for about 3 min .
And being stung hundreds of times by honey increased my immunity from severe swelling to a slight itch .
Great and informative video. I really appreciate it.
I am getting really frustrated with youtubes nonsense though. They said they were going to take away the dislike button, but instead just hid the numbers while making the dislike button super sensitive. I hit the like button a dozen time but it wouldn’t light up. I had to dislike it first in order for the like button to function. So I hope it shows this video as being liked.
Thank you!
Felt like I was watching a professional movie. Excellent video and I learned a bunch. I don't have bee's but I'd like some I think
Thanks Fredrick this was great info . I have not had this to happen to me yet . Keep up the great work an the video’s.
Thanks for watching!
Thanks, great video. Very informative.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Interesting how you go about combining the colonies with the paper with slits. Thank you for the informative video.
Glad it was helpful! The top box bees actually just pushed their way down into the bottom box without removing the paper... so far. It's interesting to say the least.
Great footage Fred, wishing you well with a new queen ahead!
Thank you, she's already on her way... gotta love the Weaver Family, they had mated queens ready to go! And this morning I already have a swarm to go collect, so the original spot will have a new colony right away.
@@FrederickDunn You got a swarm? Lucky. I only got 2 this year. But I got none last year so I will take it!
This is fascinating, thanks. I would like to find some land someday and do this.
Nice video, very instructive, thanks
Glad it was helpful!
Very helpful information. Thank you!
You're very welcome!
Thank you. I had no idea how to detect robbing. Now I know.
Glad to help
Good reference video; thanks Fred.
Thanks and you're very welcome!
Excellent tutorial !!!!!!
Glad you liked it!
Thank you I Learnt something new about bees today.
Glad to hear it!
Great video, thanks for sharing. It's good to know what signs I should be aware of when I finally get me some bees.
Thank you!
This was a great Video. It’s all about the Queen sometimes.
Thank you :)
what a brilliant video,fred your video work and information is epic,from a fan in the u.k
Awesome! Thank you!
I wish I had the ability to get into this hobby. I like your videos to experience it anyway.
Great info thank you!
Thanks and you're welcome! :)
Amazing. Thanks.
Very good.
Thank You ,FRED learned something new from you again Joe 2022
You're welcome :)
Fantastic Fred, as always... very interesting behavior.
Thank you John, always nice to see your comments!
Just bought our Flow Hive 2+ and a couple regular langstroth! So excited to pick up the bees this week. We are all ready for splits when needed.
That is awesome! I hope you get them all together and glued up well in advance of the bees arriving :)
@@FrederickDunn it has arrived and we are oiling the hive asap, painted the roof yesterday!!
I noticed robbing 1 week ago so i put the entrance reducer on the hives which stopped that cold my 2 cents cheers
Stopping the robbing is one part, knowing they were queenless before that is the real key. Queenless colonies seem to invite invasion.
I've concluded that if a hive gets robbed to death ... it probably deserved to die. Making more new bees is easy. The equipment is where all the value is.
I have no idea how I found this channel- but watching you with your bees has turned them from a "okay yeah they're important" into probably one of my favorite creatures. Bees are so interesting! If I ever get the chance to live in a rural area, I'm 100% getting an apiary of my own. I love to see your videos, and your narrations are both incredibly informative and soothing. Love love the observation hive!
How did you first get into beekeeping?
Thanks Krysta, I got into bees when I first began photographing and videoing them when colony collapse dissorder was making headlines. I wanted to know more about my subject matter and started keeping my own bees and that's how it all started :)
ok muito bem meu amigo . excelente trab. Eu amo as abelhas
quite an aggro angry sort of sound from the robber bees, and interesting that aspect of just charging in and out without any sort of entering and leaving ritual.
Love your vid
Can't wait to see what happens with these two put together :) very hopeful story :)
We shall see how it goes :) thanks Sarah!
Honestly I feel like commercial bee keepers are a detriment to the bee population. Bee's are endangered. We need to be saving as many as we can. Commercial bee keepers are normally only in it for the money. Great video honey. Please keep up the amazing work
Do you keep bees ?
hello Fred. thank you for all you do to help the new bee keepers.what ever happen to your hive that was poisoned?
They have fully recovered. Thanks for asking :)
Thanks Mr Dunn,,,,🇱🇨👊🏿👍🏿🖤,, learning process
I haven't had the displeasure of a robbing event yet but I appreciate the information of what to look for and how to remedy it. I'm going to go ahead and get a few Beesmart robbing screens just in case. Thanks and keep the videos coming!!!!!!
Unfortunately it is just matter of time especially as you build up your apiary.
Yes, everyone eventually experiences robbing on some level. The key is to give them a defend-able entrance AND.... be aware when they go queenless... this could have been averted by a more keen beekeeper.... should have re-queened them weeks ago.
@@FrederickDunn It is all a never-ending learning experience and I think bees benefit from a hands off approach :) You can learn a lot like you say from just looking at the landing board and the behaviour there. Take care and have a great day.
Wow. The zoom level of how up close you are getting is amazing. That is one of the big perks of your videos. I hope you can keep doing these vids with watching the front entrances up close. Very fun!
Is the number of guards in a small colony similar to a big colony's guard numbers? How does that work? Is it proportional, or typically at a certain number constantly, whether large or small?
The number of guards on the landing board seems to not be tied to the population of the hive, but could be partly genetics as well as the status of the queen and resources stored. A highly defensive line of bees would have more guards dedicated to that duty. Some of the more passive stock would have only a few.
Hi Fred! Try this for preventing the robbing: If you find out which hive is the robber hive scrape some capped honey in their chamber. They will start eating and fixing their comb and stop robbing behavior. This is what my grandpa was doing. To find out which hive is a robber hive you need to sprinkle wood ash on the robbing bees and chase them.
What I do to find the robbers if they are from my apiary is to dump powdered sugar on them at the robbing landing board and see what other colonies they show up at. Then, if they are mine, I spray the front of that hive with 1:1 sugar syrup and Honey-B-Healthy and they stop. This gives the defending colony an opportunity to fortify their defenses if it isn't too late. In this case, the robbed colony was already too weak.
Great video and thank you for spending so much of your time on these educational video's. I'm new to beekeeping having started this spring after years of consideration. Your videos truly help me along and have great visualizations. I have the same problem that you described in the video with one of my colonies and thinking about re queening it. I do have a really hard time to find a place to order a new queen. There is a lot on the internet but its hard to tell which one would be reliable. Not sure if you can answer this question as you mentioned before you don't advertise, but it would be great if you could give me some direction. Many Thanks Andreas
Good to know
Fred, another great learning video. Looks like it's time to sharpen that knife. But then again, at least you (we) are still caring one. I feel we're a dying breed though. :)
Hi Fred, I was thinking about the flow frames the other day and how the bees separate nectar to different frames. Any idea if they mix nectars in the same frame, or do they stop collecting a specific type when they run out of room for it? Would you benefit with more honey by extracting flow frames when full even if all the flow frames aren't full?
I tend to wait for all of the flow-frames to fill before draining them off even one by one. They do mix nectar in different cells on the same frame. You get those strong variations when they fill the frames early as the season progresses from one bloom source to the next as they fill the frames. For example, by the end of the growing season, it all looks the same when goldenrod and asters dominate the landscape. But the early nectar sources are well divided and easy to see the differences. After all the frames are full/capped, you can then select and drain individual frames only to have the bees refill them and cap them often within 11 days of the take-off. They did that last year and it was astonishing to see how quickly a strong colony did that.
I've had good luck putting a laying queen under a queen cage near emerging brood on a frame introduced into the hive. Both brood and queen pheromone are then in play to suppress worker ovaries.
I had a framless brood comb fall off the frame yesterday as of now its laying on tbe bottom of the hive, what can I do? New beekeeper. Thanks
Look up attaching comb to frames with rubber bands! Put that right back in the frame by wrapping rubber bands around it to hold it against the top-bar.... I have a video about that, but didn't post it.
Here in NE PA that would be Bees plus Yellow Jackets. When you see this behavior the colony is usually gona already. A pile of those white specs all across the bottom below the frames. All the honey frames uncapped and robbed.
I found out from a bee research lab in Florida that you don't need to put newspaper down to separate the bees. Just put them together. They do just fine. The paper annoys them and makes a mess for hive beetles to hide in They don't like it and try to remove it.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. We don't have the small hive beetles to contend with. Depending upon the colonies being joined and their disposition, you're right, the paper can be optional. Yes, they remove the paper in short order.
Totally great watching your video..I'm in Astoria Ore and do all the technics..you just used..in fact I teach them..but I've been building my own robber screens. Not just for honey bee robbing but yellow jackets too..but introducing a queen directly into laying workers?? I've had laying workers reject queens..any thoughts?
Very informative video Fred. Where did you find news print, without the ink? Thanks for sharing. Blessings.
Years ago I bought a huge box of it on Amazon... it's great stuff.
Thank you for another amazing video. This is a queen action packed at work . She is incredibly accurate with her pattern of laying filling almost every cell. So it will return and fill uncapped cells later? Please let us know.
Thank you so much for this information. I have a lot to watch on your channel! Wow! 🙏✨... I have only one beehive here in central Portugal but returned from our holidays Sunday night to find very few bees coming in and out. Yesterday morning revealed gangs of Asian hornets at the entrance have been attacking them.. . Waiting on the landing board and carrying them off. I spent hours yesterday sat by the hive and killing the non native hornets and they seemed to become very few and far between . This morning though I only see one or two Asiatic wasps but I have a lot of bees flying in and out of the hive, not defensive at all and that frenzy of activity you show, coming out loaded. I have put an entrance reducer but I don't have a robbing vent. I must invest!
I am wondering if i should go into the hive after sundown to see if I can take aside any resources they have left in the top box. I have a deep box of frames on top of the brood box. Yesterday I took a peep and it seemed there was some capped honey there still. Maybe not after all of the robbing today though 🤔😔...
Thanks for the video, I have a question. What are the little white entrance restrictors that you use, that I see on your hive that you combined with the one that got robbed. Thank you
That's a BeeSmart Design Ultimate Bottom board.. it has a screen and comes with mouse guards which can be flipped over and used as entrance reducers. It also has a screened bottom board.
I am interested in the « why » they got to that point. Could you give us a few reasons...as to foresee something like that happening...a little prévention...sort of speak! Very interesting video. Thank you.
Great answer Sinister Hippo! Yes, I suspect that they built up, emitted a swarm and the replacement queen(s) failed and they went into a state of decline. Should have been caught weeks ago before their numbers got so low... this is rare in my apiary as I tend to catch it early through landing board observations. I was paying too much attention to the other colonies and these just got out of hand.
Another option is to put a light water-hose infront of the entrance and let it "rain". That stops the attack as well.
That's only temporary as they resume the attack as soon as the water is no longer present.