Hi COBKA members – My wife Lynda has been concerned for a few weeks that our hives are being robbed based on the activity outside the hives, the amount of sugar water and pollen we are going through, and the seemingly small amount of honey production when we have been surrounded by blooming rabbit brush for weeks now.  So we went to work.  Lynda purchased two robber screens from Better Bees*, and we did some research.

Late last night after the temperature had dropped, our two hives (Honey and Sweetie) were fairly quiet.  Honey had perhaps a hundred bees on the front porch, Sweetie a few dozen.  We set both entrances of the robber screens to closed, reversing the mouse guards and closing the baffle hatch. Given the screens were the width of the hives and fit perfectly, they allowed us to “broom” the bees backwards either into the entrance or in the space between the old front wall and the new screened front wall with little or no loss of bees.

When we went out this morning, our suspicions were confirmed .  Unless our hives have a grave yard shift and we had locked them out, these were bees from some other colony actively and loudly protesting being locked out of their food bank.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AgHPkYZKaWBvkctN8iypzzjM5gQb2A?e=OQTyqg  - still photo of robber bees attacking screened (closed) hive

https://1drv.ms/v/s!AgHPkYZKaWBvkctFvn4tLztiRRIGPg?e=cWHxeT      - video of same, much better visualization

As you can see in the video, these bees felt entitled, which perhaps was not surprising since they may have been feeding off Honey’s hard work for some time.

We decided to take further action to discourage them, so out came the sheets and the essential oil.  We covered the hives with sheets and soaked them with water in the hope that it would present an additional barrier to the robbers bees, both physical and olfactory. 

Interesting side note – I used the smoker on the robber bees that were covering the robber screen, hoping to calm them while I placed the sheet.  They weren’t interested in being calmed.  The smoke launched them into action and made me grateful I had suited up for this exercise.  They swarmed me.  It accomplished my purpose, which was to get the sheet between them and the hive.

We also placed a mug containing a paper towel soaked in lemon-eucalyptus oil to hopefully further confuse the robbers’ effort to find the hives based on the smell of the hives.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AgHPkYZKaWBvkctMdqiWXmLBMtRjRQ?e=gW7dAj – hives with wet sheets over them

UPDATE – Since it has been almost two hours since the sheets were placed, I thought I would check to see if we had sent them packing.  Wishful thinking.  I lifted the sheet to look at the robber screen and realized I should have suited up.  There was a double layer of angry bees on the screen, still trying to get in, even though I had smoked them all away before I placed the wet sheet over the hive.  So it appears neither the wet sheets nor the lemon-eucalyptus is discouraging them. 

Lynda says her studies show that once a bee returns and finds food somewhere, it is locked in on that location.  If that is the case, then we may be in for a long battle.  I filled the feeders with multiple gallons of sugar water, so our plan is to keep them locked in for a few days to see if that will discourage the robbers.  (We’ll check the hives late at night when the robbers have returned to their den of thieves.) 

Suggestions welcome, as we are new at this.

C.C. & Lynda

* Beware, although these screens are nicely designed as both robber baffles with screen and can be configured as mouse guards, they  assume a specific outer rail width and height for the bottom pan/porch.  I had to make a simple modification to one screen as one of our hive bottom pans did have the same width rails.  It only took a few minutes.  https://www.betterbee.com/wooden-hive-kits-10-frame/rs10-robber-screen-wooden.asp