# Robbing?



## Legion© (Sep 7, 2007)

Pretty sure these girls were getting robbed out at one of the hives in my backyard. There was a steady stream of bees from one particular direction, so it definitely wasn't orientation, lots of bees on the ground in front too. The hive was queenless or at least had been up until recently after swarming. The day before my partner saw something similar at the hive to the left, but it didn't last long and I was at work so didn't get to see it. Lasted about an hour at this one before things settled back down to normal. Not too sure how much they might have gotten as there was still plenty of uncapped up top, but less than I remembered at the bottom. A few dead/dying bees scattered on the ground afterwards, but a lot less than I would have expected if it was robbing.


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## iddee (Jun 21, 2005)

Wild guess here.

Since you are in spring now, I would think it might be a swarm with a clipped or wounded queen that cannot fly.


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## BjornBee (Feb 7, 2003)

Not Robbing!

The last picture tells the story. If this was robbing, you would have bee entering and checking all possible entrances. The last picture has no bees interested in the top or any other crack or possible place of entry.

I would also suggest that to have that many bees slugging it out on the grass in front of the hive, would normally never reach that level, if in fact it was robbing. They would of has more than enough to handle the fight at the entrance with that many bees.

And bees are not that detailed when a robbing frenzy does happen. The hive next door has no challenges and is acting normal.


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

With all those dandelion blooms, it seems there would be plenty of early nectar available for build-up, unless yours are the only ones within about 3.2 kilometers or so. And if they are bringing in lots of pollen and nectar, they usually won't be interested in robbing. It is amazing to see that many bees landing there in the grass, around here the toads would clean them up in a few minutes -- not a good thing.


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## Legion© (Sep 7, 2007)

Thanks for the input guys 

I had thought it odd that any robbing would occur with a good spring flow on and the fact that they seemed to miss the top entrance, very few of our bees use it, it's basically just a drone escape after moving some capped brood above the excluder (though they do like sitting there and watching whats going on outside in the evening)

Any thoughts on why the trail of bees heading in/out in one particular direction? I've never seen them do that before or since. They're always going through about four different flightpaths off the section.

It did get worse than that - there were more flying around a couple of minutes later, after we moved inside to watch through the back door.

Joseph - thankfully we don't have anything like toads to worry about here, nor bears, or snakes and poisonous spiders for that mater. The biggest threat to bees here is the council 

I've posted in 101 about the mystery Queen that finally showed up recently, does what's going on here have any likely conclusions/hints as to what happened?
They'd already swarmed a week or so before this, so perhaps a secondary swarm with an injured queen as iddee suggested?


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## iddee (Jun 21, 2005)

If the old queen is injured or clipped, it is HIGHLY likely that a virgin queen led the first swarm and the old queen is trying again. Set an empty hive right next to that one and see if she walks into it.


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## Legion© (Sep 7, 2007)

The old queen is healthy and laying in her new home at my fathers place. I followed the initial swarm (just happened to be home) and boxed them. She started laying in there pretty much straight away (old comb that just needed cleaning out) which suggests to me she was the original queen rather than a virgin.


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

Perhaps they're just mating flight tag-alongs?


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## dcross (Jan 20, 2003)

Maybe they had dwindled far enough that a new swarm moved in? I know it's pretty far fetched...


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## Legion© (Sep 7, 2007)

They were still pretty strong at that stage, more than enough to fill one deep I would say. When I got the hive a couple of months they'd been overwintered with honey supers on, the previous owner took those off and extracted before 'selling' me the hive (no money has exchanged hands yet ). As a consquence coming into spring there was a hell of a lot of bees compressed into 3 mediums. I got the new honey super on too late, probably a week or two after the first white wax, and they swarmed. The swarm has been quite comfortable starting off in two deeps, and what was left in this hive was probably much the same or a little less.

There's now a Queen in this hive, though she wasn't laying when I spotted her last week. I'll take another look tomorrow or Monday when I check the one next to it to see if it needs another honey super yet (on it's third and going strong on the spring flow).


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