Laurence Edwards warns beekeepers not to open hives in September, as even brief inspections trigger robbing behavior. The scent of honey from opened frames attracts foragers and wasps that can overwhelm a colony. Prepare in August with Apivar strips, feeders, and syrup so you won't need to inspect in fall.
In this video, I'm going to show you why you should do everything you possibly can to not open up your beehives in September. So this might look like classic orientation behavior or your bees on a busy day, but it is not. It is very distinctive robbing behavior. And this beehive behind me here— watch out, bee, don't get too close— this beehive is the one that's got splodge inside it. Just done a quick video on splodge, thinking that everything was okay, thinking that robbing behaviour wasn't too bad, and look at what is going on. Just that scent of honey, the scent of nectar going into the air, and you get a couple of opportunist bees that take something, take it back to their hives, and then all hell breaks loose. Robbing here, robbing there, robbing, robbing everywhere. Get your bees set up in August, put your Apivar strips in, get your feeders on, monitor the stores by hefting, and then all you need to do is go into your colonies and top them up with syrup. No need to go into your colonies opening them up at this point in the year because this is what happens. I'll put my veil on now and I'll give you a close-up and show you some robbing behaviour that was triggered by opening a beehive on the 1st of September for about 15 minutes. So I had a frame rested up there and what you can see is bees clumping up onto each other. Some of the bees from this hive are trying to defend their beehive and they are just being swamped by the robbing bees. See how they'll start to cluster up and then they'll fall off? That is just classic robbing behavior. You've got wasps getting involved in it as well, and you really can avoid all of this by not opening up your colonies in September. There's just no need to do it. Okay, I've fallen foul of that. I didn't think it was going to be that bad this early on. There's obviously a dearth and there's nothing for the bees to be going on, so they are just sniffing out Everything that they can get. There'll be some trace elements of honey on that frame there, and the bees are sensing it, the wasps are sensing it, and they will do anything to get hold of it. But look at what else it's done. This is the hive here that I just shook out. There is nothing in this hive, not a scratch, but you can't tell that to the bees. You've got the Apivar strip on the top there that I'm going to clear away now. Classic robbing behavior. If you're seeing this, go around your colony, seal everything up, reduce the entrances down, Make sure you're not spilling any syrup and just wait for it to subside because it will subside pretty quickly if the bees aren't getting anything. If you let it continue, it grows out of control, the wasps get involved as well, and before you know it, there is nothing left and all of your bees get robbed out. Now this hive here is on the complete opposite side. This isn't even anywhere near to what was going on, and I've not even opened this hive and the bees are just sensing something. They're thinking that they can get in here for some reason. And it's interesting because the hive next door is a Lagustica hive, and you can tell when it's them robbing because they're so orange. So that hive there, for some reason, is just having a go up here at the moment, and they weren't when I got here. It was all pretty calm and subdued, and now look at them robbing, robbing everywhere.
