Summer Hive Update

Many of you have been asking (thank you) how the bees are doing. Here is a little summer time update. We have not been inside the box in over a month. The weather has been weird here. It’s either too cold, too hot or too windy for it to be good conditions to look inside during the middle of the day (when the most bees are foraging). So, alas, we have been observing from the outside.

To prevent robbing behavior you can block the hive entrance with grass. Make sure you unblock it once the robber bees leave or it starts to cool down so your bees can go home for the night.I love this photo because you can see the bee in the top left corner in action with her huge orange pollen stash.

 

This has come with it’s fair share of worry and concern. We had another robber bee scare. While I was out of town my boyfriend notice a bunch of bees larger and furrier than ours hanging around. He witnessed fighting at the entrance and these larger bees flying sluggishly away from the hive (a sign they are full of robbed honey). We worked together to find a robbing solution- plug the entrance with grass so no bees can come or go and hopefully the robbing bees will leave while our bees congregate outside the hive. I also read you can place a wet bed sheet over the box, the robber bees have a hard time getting under and out from the sheet while our bees have no issue. We did both. The next day they were back. And the next day. Plugging the entrance is of concern because it means the bees cannot continue with their daily work. I took a trip to the local bee store.

I brought in specimens of the ‘robber’ bees and the regular bees. I was told you cannot tell if they are robber bees just by looking at their bodies because all bees in the hive will look different since they are all half sisters. But we do think the larger bees are the drones. The male bees. These bees are responsible for mating with the queen. They represent the smallest number of bees in the hive. They are fed and cared for by the workers bees. Once the mating season is over the drones are kicked out of the hive. They have no stinger and are larger and fuzzier than the workers. I think we have a match. So the colony marches on, robber free, and I can take a break from worry.

More on drone bees.