Honey Bees

I've been robbed!!!

 

One of my hives swarmed, so I had a queenless hive with very few workers left.  I introduced a new queen, they killed her, and they grew a queen of their own.  She had just started laying, when a bunch of bees from another hive (not mine) came and attacked my hive and killed all the bees and stole all the honey!  It was really a shame, but it was interesting to watch this insect war.

 

The invading bees are all over the weak hive.

You can see the stick I put in front of the hive entrance in a vain attempt to keep the attackers out.  They were at every nook and cranny trying to get into that poor hive, and in the end they did.  In 4 days 8 full combs of honey were stolen.  I now have some very nice drawn out comb though!

 

Here were some more useless efforts to keep the bees cool and still not antagonize the attackers.  I put some propolis traps on the top of the supers.  I think they did help to air out the hive, but the robbers went wild!

 

   

You can see there was a bee seige!

 

The bees were absolutely not interested in me.  I went right up there and messed with the hive and they just buzzed around me like I was invisible.

 

So now I have to safely store this hive until I can get a new nuc of bees and queen to put into it.  It's a write off for this winter.

 

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