Plain Talk: Late Winter Robbing (273)

Episode 273 – Plain Talk: Late Winter Robbing

Jim Tew

Hi listeners, I just got suited up, leaving the shop. I wanted to take the walk back to the bee yard. Of course it's mostly melt now, so the ground's kind of soggy. It's about 40 degrees. I'll be really surprised if the bees were flying. and I want to take a hike back here to see what's going on. Listeners, I'm Jim Tew. I come to you once a week here at Honey Bee Obscura. I try to have a conversation with you about something to do with just plain talk beekeeping.

Introduction

Welcome to Honey Bee Obscura brought to you by Growing Planet Media the producers of the Beekeeping Today podcast. Join Jim Tew, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the challenges of managing honeybees. Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honeybees. Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honeybees.

Jim Tew

This is the moles route. Digging up my backyard. I've had other groups tell me that moles are a good thing because they eat grubs in the ground. I wonder if that tractor will start. I haven't started it since last fall.

I came out here a few days ago, and the back door was standing wide open. I don't know how long it had been open, and I didn't know if I had animals in here, if I should close it or not. There's a little bit of flight. Oh, it'd be so easy just to draw conclusions, listeners, but it would be unfair. The only one that's flying and is flying readily is the one from the insulated, expanded polystyrene insulated box. Does that mean anything? I don't know. The others are quiet.

All kinds of deer activity here. All right, do you remember when I came out here the last time and did that little piece, and I was completely stumped at how many bees I had alive? And I came out with all that activity and flying, and it was a real pleasant surprise. and I specifically ask you or ask myself if that was robbing going on. And at the time, I thought, nope, it's not too early for robbing. But I've got to tell you that it's not too early for robbing. And that's what I wanted to talk about. I've talked about it over and over again. I'm going to go to a state meeting here this weekend, and I was checking to see what the topic was that I discussed the last time I was there. And in 2023, I was talking about robbing already. So I guess I've kind of driven this into the ground.

But I've just become a real proponent for this whole concept of robbing. The biggest thing wrong with, I think, is what we've named this thing. We named it robbing, you know, like thieving, like bad. And I don't know that it's bad. So let me see if I can do this. I asked Chat AI to describe robbing to me. and I asked if it was some kind of a, get ready for it, kleptoparasitic phenomenon. And chat came right back.

I've got to close the door. It's cold here.

Chat came right back and said, no, honeybees are not kleptoparasitic, meaning that they have a system and a design and a technique and a routineness for robbing each other. And so Chet concisely explained that it was a seasonal thing, an opportunistic thing, but otherwise bees were adapted for visiting flowers, collecting pollen and nectar and gums, water, and that was the primary thing that they did. So that was a mutualistic response.

But I pushed Chad, and I said, it really looks like that robbing is something they do have a plan for. They are good at it. So Chad came back and said that, and described robbing like this. It is a kleptoparasitic phenomenon embedded in what is otherwise a mutualistic lifestyle.

So I guess what Chet was trying to say is that under the right conditions, bees can rob, but under normal conditions, bees would rather be out foraging on flowers. And I'm surmising that that's less dangerous than just going over and pilfering your neighbor's colony.

I got a thought here, and I just can't put it into words. This whole concept, robbing, I'd like to call it reappropriation, just to get away from the stigma of thieving bees. It looks to me like that it's just an alternative for doing something in the off season to be productive. If they're going to be flying around, they're looking for food, they're looking for water, maybe. they're looking basically I guess they could be looking for future home sites but more often than not they're looking for food. So how would it be that robbing is seen as a bad thing?

I think robbing is seen from a beekeeper's perspective that it's a bad thing if you go out and open all these colonies when there's a dearth and you got some weak ones then you're going to agitate the bees get them all upset and then you're going to get robbing started and then those weaker colonies are going to be killed off, and that's a bad thing.

Is that what our concept of robbing is? Because in the wild, delicate food reserves, valuable food reserves, are reappropriated to those that still have a chance at surviving and swarming and propagating themselves. And just to leave those reserves there to be abandoned and some other animal take them, certainly does not seem to be useful.

I don't have a clock running, but I think it's about time to take a break and hear from our sponsor, and it'll give me a chance to get my thoughts back together. I'm standing out here in the cold and trying to talk to you and trying to make some sense out of this.

Betterbee

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Jim Tew

Okay, thanks for that short break. I feel better now. I'm trying to say that this concept that we've named robbing is a valuable procedure that the bees use in seasons or times when nothing else is going on. And I argue in defense of those bees robbing that this is a sensible thing to do, to take over, to commandeer, to loot the resources from lesser hives that's going to rob out. some are going to die out, not rob out, that are going to die out.

That throws me into a quandary because I have to say then that from a beekeeper standpoint, this is terrible. From a natural beekeeping standpoint, it probably makes survival sense. When I came out here, it's been about two weeks ago now, we had that really nice warm weather and all these bees were flying. And I was so surprised to see some of the colonies that, again, today they look dead. But I realized there's bees in these boxes. They're just very quiet, sitting by their metabolic fires. And I asked, with all this bee activity, was this robbing?

Because it had a look about it. It had a look about it, listeners. And as I stood there on that spring day with not a thing in sight, There was not a single pollen load coming back. It was just a nice day, and that's when I got all sappy about all the defecation spots that were out there. And I had some thoughts about that. That was a huge odor field. How long does that odor field linger? But that's another subject, another rabbit hole, and another what-if-ing.

So when I saw these bees flying, I thought they could be starting to rob, but I've done nothing. These colonies, I've confessed to you, these colonies have not been opened. What did he say? I said these colonies have not even been opened in about three years. I've done nothing. So I don't want to get too far on that. This is almost the point where I just say, don't try this at home. Most of you know my situation for the last four years, and so I've been distracted by everything, and the colonies had to go their own way. When I came out here and these bees were all robbing and, well, flying, active, pooping, the beekeeper in me said there's some robbing activity going on. How did they find it that fast?

Listeners, so these bees are wired. The first time they can fly, these bees know to go check other doorknobs, And I don't know if the bees that day were all going to each other's hives and there was a lot of confusion going on because they were all saying, is this possible to take this away from you? I think that it's an anomaly. There's about eight beehives here, and they're close. Three of them are side by side. That's an anomaly. I mean, that's too close for naturalness. So I know that I'm causing some confusion. by having these three separate colonies that close together, and they will readily kill each other, but I'm doing it because of grass cutting and walking back here.

So the question I'm trying to ask myself is, how do they know so instinctually? Is that an odor field? And they keep checking all the colonies, and if they find no resistance, those two packages I bought last spring, they both died. The one was really surprising. One built up really nicely, and I'd never dreamed that it would die. Do I dare say this or not? Because I don't want to encourage anyone to do what I'm doing. But the two colonies died that I opened the most. And the colonies did not all die from the ones that I've not opened. And of those colonies, two swarms moved in, abandoned equipment, and took up there.

But I'm off the subject now because I want to stay on the robbing thing. I think that I'm guessing that these bees are able to know that by checking, by shaking, by ringing doorbells figuratively, that nobody is home here, and there's a hole deep of honey on that package colony that died. So there was a cloud of activity. And while I was standing there marveling that those bees had found this colony a few feet away, 15, 20 feet away, pow, I got stung. I made a comment that I was getting stung well that opened a whole arena of other questions why are these bees so aggressive I mean why they're not like trying to kill me but why am I being stung at all I haven't done a thing in the world I haven't touched any equipment I've done nothing but stand here and they're stinging me and I guess it's that old procedure that I've told people in the past that when their bees are feeling threatened they're not trying to hit a specific target.

They're hitting any target that could be a pest. Could be the dog standing there with you. I don't know. Maybe it's why they were stinging me that day. But it really looks like that bees are using robbing, reappropriating other foodstuffs at a time of the year when nothing else is available. And I argue with those who say that this is not something with a name. This is not mutualistic. It's opportunistic. It's something. But it's pretty clear that when nothing, nothing is available, that they readily turn on any other colony. And what I don't know is how the colonies do this in the wild.

Do these bees right here in my yard know where there's wild nest in the vicinity? And are they flying over to check that out to see if it's available? How far down this path did the bees go? Instead of working apple blooms in May, instead of working dandelion most of the summer, when there's nothing else available, they work their neighboring colonies as food sources. For carbohydrate, I don't ever know of them stealing protein. That would be an interesting thing to ponder at some point, too.

I finish on this point. When I came out on that brief warm day, that was the first time the bees had been out and it had been brutally cold in the previous weeks. And these bees were already on the job, seemingly checking each other, a little bit feisty. And they were clearly checking out the empty equipment, nothing else being available. Now, how many bees were flying around looking at maple blooms that hadn't opened? How many bees were out there? Were most of the bees here? I don't know. I don't know. And I don't know. but I do know that robbing is not something that's beekeeper induced it's something that bees do to keep waste so much as possible to an absolute minimum it's not an ugly system it's a heartless system from our perspective but it's not an ugly system so just know that your bees are going to and you probably can't do much about it, but try to suppress it, keep it under control, but it's a natural thing, just like trying to control swarming.

I've punched myself out. I don't mean to wear this subject out, but I'm totally intrigued by it because it's right there in front of us. It's a major beekeeping ordeal. And as you know, we don't have a lot of control for it. So I just always wonder, and look, and think, especially here in the long, dark winter when I've got nothing else to do.

I look forward to talking to you next week. I'm Jim. And for now, I'm telling you bye.