In the late summer months and into fall, the availability of nectar from the surrounding environment declines. This decline triggers bees to shift away from the normal foraging behavior. All of the forager bees that were needed during the nectar flow are suddenly idle and searching for resources. Robbing is the term we use to describe when forager bees from different hives force their way into a hive and steal the honey stores. Once robbing begins it is just about impossible to stop. The only way to stop the behavior is to close up the weak hive for a period of time. Eventually the foreign forager bees will give up and go somewhere else.
Robbing usually takes place when a colony is weak and cannot defend the hive entrance. In this case, the colony had suffered enormous losses due to pesticide exposure and eventual queen failure. The robing may begin with only one bee but will soon expand to thousands if the resources are unguarded. The bees will quickly exhaust all of the honey and nectar stores until all that is left is just empty drawn comb.
Robbing can look like normal entrance activity behavior upon first glance. However, robbing is much less organized and appears to be more frantic and frenzied. You will also notice bees flying and searching on all corners of the hive looking for entrances. With this example, you can also notice wax capping strewn all over the entrance. Signs of robbing behavior inside the hive box.
When we look inside we see little to no signs of a working colony. All we see are bees focused solely on the honey stores and consuming those honey stores. We can also observe the thousands of wax cappings that are littered in the hive from honey cells that have been torn open. Also note in the video how completely uninterested these bees are with my presence. These bees are not guarding anything but rather caught in the act of stealing.
When robing begins in a weak/dead colony like this one, I also take precautions to close down the entrances of the other neighboring hives. There are thousands of foragers robbing this hive out. When I remove this hive from the location, those thousands of foragers may decide to shift the robbing behavior to a different hive nearby. We can help prevent that by reducing the entrance of all nearby hives or closing them all together until the robbing subsides.
