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General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
 #4748  by Chrisbarlow
 05 Sep 2019, 18:50
Feeding syrup to nucs for overwintering. Got some new maisemores poly nucs with the deeper thicker roofs which I very happy with them so far.
 #4749  by Patrick
 06 Sep 2019, 12:07
NigelP wrote:
04 Sep 2019, 23:46
Let them get on with it...Waited until, dark and shut door.
Frames all nice and dry /wry grin/
Not a disaster then Nigel, simply "revising your objectives in real time" for the supers in question :lol: :lol:

I have read that if bees discover a "free" source of syrup or honey that you should not just remove it or exclude them as they may waste lots of time and energy (and cause local chaos) looking for where it is / has gone. Instead, remove or exclude the main source but also supply them with a small ( ie tablespoon) amount of the relevant feed in the same location so they can easily find it and finish off, then they know when it has gone, its gone.

I suppose the rationale is that newly recruited foragers turning up after having been told there was free grub available via dance and trophyllaxis, scout about trying to find out exactly where their sisters found this great bonanza they heard about which they now can't obviously find at the location suggested. If they instead turn up and find an obvious but rapidly diminishing focus for their attention they assume that was it.

I am always wary of rationalising bee behaviour in human terms, but have tried it and it certainly does not seem to obviously delay them losing interest, dispersing and going home, so maybe worth trying if you inadvertantly create a flying bee and wasp -maggedon in a place with lots of neighbours etc.
 #4750  by NigelP
 06 Sep 2019, 15:56
Patrick wrote:
06 Sep 2019, 12:07

I suppose the rationale is that newly recruited foragers turning up after having been told there was free grub available via dance and trophyllaxis, scout about trying to find out exactly where their sisters found this great bonanza they heard about which they now can't obviously find at the location suggested. If they instead turn up and find an obvious but rapidly diminishing focus for their attention they assume that was it.
As I recall there is no direction given by the dancers for "nectar" sources less than 100ms, so there is lots of frantic random flying to locate what is obviously a really good nectar source nearby.

As I'm pretty isolated and so not worried about anyone else's bees.... I have experimented in the past by providing rich pickings about 20 m's from my hives.
In less than an hour there is absolute frantic tooing and froeing of bees all around my garden searching for the nectar source....this dies down as a veritable cloud of bees have all now discovered the location of the source. And as you correctly point out Patrick, once the source has been consumed the bees leave it alone; although I'm convinced a few scouts still revisit to see if the "flow is back on". Contrary to populist opinion this does not lead to any robbing of other colonies as the books and everyone tells me it should. And as I'm isolated have no issues with diseases as no-one else's bees are close enough.
A second interesting point is If I repeat the experiment a few days later, there is no frantic tooing and froing, they all go immediately to the site. If I want to generate this frantic flying I have to move the source to another part of the garden. Clever bees.

A third interesting point is that a few wasps inevitably turn up, but you can see they have no social recruitment to food sources as their numbers only gradually increase as they follow a scent trail back. And when there is no nectar left the number of wasps noiw outnumbers the numbers the bees Say about 50 wasps in total to an odd visiting bee...stupid wasps.

Robbing, in my experience, is a phenomena of very weak hives/nucs. Bees (and wasps) will exploit a weak hive without any external nectar stimulus, as I have found to my cost in the past.
 #4751  by nealh
 06 Sep 2019, 20:43
For sure wasps don't have the same comms as honey bees have, this week I finished the last of my extracti ng and the final couple of supers. I decided not to put them on the hives as they have treatment on so one at a time supers placed on the patio, Initially 3 or 4 wasps happened on them first followed by a few bees within 20 mins no more wasps but many hundreds of bees arriving. Once the food source declines the bees gradually disappear though a few wasps remain in hope, a single V,c arrived to nab a bee but it or another didn't return until a couple days later when another super was left out for cleaning.
 #4752  by AdamD
 07 Sep 2019, 08:56
The round dance doesn't give a sense of direction which is why bees go out and look for anything that might be a source of food within ~100 metres of the hive. The waggle dance develops after this which does give direction. This is why robbing can occur in the apiary if syrup is spilled - bees know there;'s food but don't know where. Most colonies will be able to defend themselves from others looking around the apiary for food, but I guess, not all of them will be able to, so sometimes a small colony can be the victim of robbing.

A feeder going on a hive usually results in bees coming out to look for food in the first instance - which is why it is recommended that it's done in the evening. However once it has run dry and is filled up a day or two later, the bees just get on with taking the syrup down and don't go out looking for it - this ties in with your experiment Nigel.

As for hive-robbing, yes it's better to move the robbed hive and put something in it's place, (Ted Hooper I think suggests this), say, a similar hive with just a couple of frames of used comb in or something similar inside. Bees will still go the hive to rob but find the food has been used up and they subsequently cease the robbing. If the hive is moved away, bees will hunt for it and possibly go into the next closest colony. This is what I do when I have a robbing incident - I had one last month, a nuc with one or two old frames inside was put in place of the robbed nuc which was moved elsewhere.
 #4753  by AdamD
 07 Sep 2019, 09:04
It's fair to say that if I have ever had robbing, it's almost always been in late summer/autumn when Apiguard is present.
I have a theory about this, and you might shoot me down - let's see. Yes, robbing is more likely if feeding is taking place for hungry colonies with no decent forage and spilling syrup won't help matters. However individual colony smell will disappear if they all stink of the same thing - Apiguard - so it will be much easier for robber bees to enter a hive unchallenged and of course once they get started, they will continue.
 #4756  by Patrick
 07 Sep 2019, 11:40
Don’t know if it’s the orchards around about or what but we always have loads of wasps scouting about - they find anything spilt very quickly and your right, they hang about longer too.

I suppose as foraging social wasps are oppprtunistic individual insect predators there is little point in evolving food source location communication. This time of year it’s presumably not about the colony but every wasp for itself to find sugar.
 #4757  by Japey Edge
 07 Sep 2019, 13:54
On the subject of wasps - I have found that spraying them with the washing up liquid and water solution (1:1ish) has been ineffective. More have flown away instead of hitting the deck.
Would using such a solution to rub off spilled syrup on hives be a good option? Or soda crystals in water? Or another?
 #4758  by Chrisbarlow
 07 Sep 2019, 15:17
I've found a quick clean with a soapy solution helps deter wasps but isn't 100%> the best thing is to not spill in the first place. With Payne's nucs, a funnel has been a massive boon. With the maisemores nucs, there top feeder is excellent. Other rapid feeders are equally easy to use. I've used contact feeders and these can be a little iffy because as the syrup goes down they can leak and lose compression inside.
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