a way to stop bees from attacking a family
August, the end of the month - the best time for bee theft. Yesterday I combined two units. Naturally, it is difficult for them to organize the protection of the entrance. And for better unification I immediately gave syrup. I combined in the evening at the beginning of six. The thieves immediately woke up and yesterday I saw the beginning of the attack. But, having closed the entrance and periodically opening it with a smoker, I released the thieves. With the onset of dusk I saw that everything had settled down - the bees lined up in a working order to ventilate. I made the entrance 2 cm, covered it with branches, but in the morning, having arrived at 11 o'clock, I saw the frenzy of bees - bee theft in all its glory. The beginning of the day, what to do? Only this hive is being bombed, in others everything is fine, although in recent days I have been regularly distributing syrup in the evening. Yesterday I also gave it to 16 families. A lot has already been brought to the central point and the number of families and colonies is well over a hundred. I walk around the hive being robbed, smoking, sometimes closing the entrance, sometimes opening it to let the thieves out. And then I got the idea to wrap the hive in a fine metal mesh. And lo and behold, I think it helped! It's three o'clock in the afternoon now, there's a bustle of work at the entrance of the family, the thieves have mostly flown away, some of them are raging on the mesh opposite the entrance. It turned out to be an effective method! The mesh is not airtight, some of the bees can get to the entrance. I even saw a bee with pollen, happily finding the entrance to its home. But the thieves are no longer coming in droves and some kind of entrance guard is starting to organize.
A simple metal mesh saved the situation. The hive is large after unification: a store and two Dadan bodies. You can't remove it. There aren't many frames in them, but the structure is bulky.
And who did you unite? It's complete nonsense! I gathered five families that had been thieved from other points in one place. They sat for a week without frames and without roofs - they did not fly away. I dumped them in a heap. Probably these bees sat for about 10 days in total without frames. August is hot, without rain. And they did not die of hunger! They probably brought something, but how else to explain the absence of bees that died of hunger. And now the weather forecast is predicting cold weather, rain. Well, what to do with them? Screw it, I'll combine it with a flight box with a volume of 4 Dadant frames. Not a big loss, if anything. And then thieves attacked this unit created yesterday. Naturally!