What does it mean to beekeepers when there is "Robbing" going on with our honey bee apiaries?
Robbing is foraging gone bad. When it is warm enough for bees to fly, but there is no nectar in the landscape, honey bees will try to gather honey by robbing other colonies. This usually happens in the fall, but in this video, it was happening on a warm spring day in March before blossoms.
When bees rob, we see a lot of bees flying near the robbed hive and approaching it cautiously, bees wrestling, making a mess of discarded wax and crystalized honey, and piles of dead bees. We see unrest in the hives throughout the apiary.
