Getting robbed (again)

[FRAMEshift]

How does this look?  Is the entrance large enough?  How long will it take for the colony bees to figure it out?  

The design looks good.  You see that there are lots of bees on the screen in front of the entrance and not at the robber screen entrance.  That's how it should be if the robbers are being fooled.  Are some bees coming and going from the small screen entrance?  If they are reorienting as they come out, then everything is right.

[Bee-Bop]

This is a workable robber screen;



Notice it is open all the way across the top !

AS I'm sure you have read, the robbers come to the bottom were the smell of the honey is !

The hive bees come out of the hive climb the screen and go on their way, they soon learn to land at the top, go down and enter the hive.

All the while the robbers are still outside smelling the honey.

After about 2/3 days the robbers haven't got any honey, so they go on about there other business.

Just to make it clear, the side you see goes against the hive, & duct tape is marvelous for attaching it to the hive box for a few days. [ Been asked about that before ]

Bee-Bop

[BlueBee]

There’s always got to be one in the crowd that has to be different…..so here goes.

The logic that the robbers are fooled by focusing on the scent of honey at the bottom of a robber screen seems flawed to me.  Maybe I’m thinking too much like a human again (it happens), but that logic doesn’t make sense to me and when I used robber screens it didn’t seem to make sense to my bees either. 

If screening a hole is all that is needed to keep robbers at bay, then I should never have any robber problems in my nucs because they have a screened top vent and screened top for that matter.  Heat and scents rise with the warm air and exit through my top screened vents (Chimney effect).  If anything, this chimney effect should be sucking air (and scents) IN from the bottom and expelling them OUT at the top.  I should have robbers by the billions converging on my top vents and leaving my nuc bottom entrances alone.  Unfortunately that is not what happens in my bee yard. 

When I used robber screens, I DID have bees stuck on the other side of the screen trying to get in.  Unfortunately, I’m convinced at lot of those bees were my house bees!

I have stuck with 9mmx9mm entrances and they have worked in my 2 frame nucs next to a bunch of strong hives.  Yes there is some robbing, so I feed the nucs at night.  The nucs are gaining in weight, so the system is working, at least in my bee yard.  My nucs are also gaining in pollen, so I know my field bees are not being blocked out of my nucs either.

[Tommyt]

After looking at the hive screen Picture again, I have a question?
If it were robbing shouldn't there be many,many more bees than what is seen?
Looks to be just confused house bees coming back from the field.
WAS this Screen put on after dark??
If so they will reorient and know how to return
If you put it on after dark, I'm incorrect of the observation

Tommyt

I looked again those robbers have POLLEN ???
I don't think they are crooks :-D

[Sundog]

I looked again those robbers have POLLEN ???
I don't think they are crooks :-D

I thought the same thing (and said so in my post), and no, I did NOT put it on after dark, I put it on around 9:30 this AM.  I took the screen back off and put the 3/8x3/8 reducer back on.

After thinking about it, I guess the top would be the better choice for an entrance, since the bees instictively go up.  I will keep an eye on the hive over the weekend, and if the robbing persists, I will put the screen on at night (nobody told me) after I cut an entrance in the top.  I can see both my hives clearly from my windows.

Making kindling (wish I had a fireplace) and having fun!

[BlueBee]

TommyT has good eyes!

In a small colony, there are simply not that many field bees.  Heck, my 2 frame nucs probably only have 2500 bees in total in them.  Only a fraction of those bees will be field bees that will need to go in and out of the hive to collect pollen, nectar, and water.  If you keep your entrance hole down to 1 bee, I believe that is still way bigger than a small colony even needs. 

How long could it take 1 bee to crawl through a 9mmx9mm hole?  Can’t be more than 2 seconds?  That would allow up to 30 bees coming and going every minute.  That is far more bees than I typically see coming and going from a small nuc earlier in the season when robbing isn’t such an issue.  Typically I only see 5 to 10 bees/minute coming and going from a small nuc.

If you’ve got adequate ventilation in your hive from sources other than the entrance, I see little downside in keeping the entrance at 1 bee size until you have at least 3 or 4 frames of bees in there.