Robbing is Ruled by means of Olfaction
Again to what occurs upon colony cave in
A Survey on Whether or not Robbing Takes Position at Cave in
My Conclusions From the Survey Responses
A funny anecdote relating to coaching bees to a smell
A SURVEY ON ROBBING AT COLLAPSE
Randy Oliver
ScientificBeekeeping.com
First revealed in ABJ February 2023
Peck and Seeley studied mite waft in an apiary in Ithaca, NY, and decided that the robbing of collapsing hives performed a significant position in generating surges within the mite numerous the robber colonies. However that didn’t appear to be the case the place I are living.
Honey bee researchers should watch out about extrapolating their box observations to different environments. The above researchers, conscious that I had lately wrapped up a box find out about of my very own, commemorated me by means of asking me to study a preprint in their paper (based totally upon David Peck’s doctoral dissertation). I shared my observations and information with them, and we mentioned our findings at duration. It changed into transparent that even supposing robbing all the way through the cave in of colonies certainly happens within the location the place they made their observations, that it doesn’t essentially occur that manner in different spaces.
Our dialogue were given me excited about why this distinction happens. What got here to the fore is solely how importantly smell is excited by robbing conduct.
ROBBING IS GOVERNED BY OLFACTION
Some years in the past, a chum and I constructed a six-sided screened enclosure for our county honest, during which lets carry out a hive inspection demo every day — immediately in entrance of audience — with the bees coming and going freely throughout the open best of the enclosure, effectively above head stage (Determine 1). This demo manner has been a powerful luck for presenting beekeeping to the general public, because the target audience can watch the presenter paintings bees with out protecting equipment, whilst they stand inches away at the different aspect of the black display.
In comparison to having a look throughout the glass of our remark hives in a close-by sales space, looking at a beekeeper open a hive immediately in entrance in their faces is a wholly other revel in for the audience!
Fig. 1. In studying methods to set up this show, I came upon to what stage olfaction is excited by robbing conduct. (We even have two free-flying remark hives in some other sales space, with the bees exiting by the use of 1.5” pipes throughout the roof. The bees flying overhead don’t reason any issues of the fairgoers.) Picture credit score Gilles Ratia.
For our preliminary setup, we positioned a hive within the cage a couple of days sooner than the honest opened. The bees temporarily realized to go out and input throughout the open best of the enclosure, and there have been no bees to be noticed out of doors the cage the place the audience can be status. All excellent!
After I gave my first demo, I caught my finger into some recently-capped honey to turn how we beekeepers experience tasting honey direct from the brush. To my wonder, inside of mins numerous bees confirmed up at the out of doors of the display immediately in entrance of the doorway of the demo hive (which used to be a few toes again). So on next demos, I used to be cautious to not smash open any cells of honey, and noticed that bees didn’t all at once display up once more. So I began paying consideration.
Over time, we endured to be frustrated by means of small numbers of bees that might display up across the display in entrance of the hive front. Trapping them didn’t assist. It took some experimentation, however I after all found out what used to be going down, and methods to resolve the issue.
Our Truthful is held in August, after we are in most cases in a nectar dearth. What seemed to be going down used to be that the bees out of doors the display had been scouts from different colonies out of doors the fairgrounds, orienting to the odors within the air onerous from the hive front throughout the enclosure.
So methods to transfer the hive front? It took a little of experimentation to resolve that foragers can simply circle up and down inside of a column of Langstroth hive our bodies. This allowed me to path bee flight (and air flow air) from the demo hive via a stacked column of empty supers going as much as the highest of the cage (10 toes off the bottom). Drawback solved — not more curious bees at the display! It used to be obviously the smell of the hive exhaust that were attracting them.
We proceed to experiment, and final summer season changed the higher bins with a chase of transparent plastic, so the target audience can watch the bees fly up and down (Determine 2).
Fig. 2. My helper Rose Pasetes (dressed for taking part in the honest along with her husband) dropped in to enroll in me for this demo. You’ll see the transparent plastic flight column at the back of her head.
I’m effectively acutely aware of how extremely delicate honey bees are to smell, and the way simply they are able to be educated to affiliate an smell with a sugar praise (within the box, comparable to how Jerry Bromenshenk educated bees to find land mines, or within the lab by the use of the “proboscis extension reaction” (PER) [[1]]). So after staring at the screen-thwarted robbing force on our demo hive, I’ve paid shut consideration to robbing conduct in our apiaries and round our honey space. I’ve spotted numerous issues:
- We will be able to have stacks of unused brood chambers containing honey sitting on pallets within the backyard, and bees won’t pay any consideration to them for weeks or months, until we smash open the honey.
- Once we’re extracting honey, the vent of the extracting room might be mobbed by means of bees if we’re extracting a honey that used to be lately accrued, however differently there’s some distance much less passion.
- Ditto in our garage backyard: if a scout occurs to come back throughout some uncovered honey, they’ll temporarily go back with recruits — and hunt down every other honey of the similar floral selection saved within the backyard.
- When disposing of honey supers, robbing is way more intense if there’s nonetheless ripening nectar within the hives than it’s if we wait till that individual nectar supply has no longer been being accrued for some time. Possible robbers seem to cue in at the explicit smell of ripening nectar from no matter flower species they’re recently or had lately been running.
- Our nucleus colonies can get the heck robbed out of them whilst there’s a robust nectar float happening.We’ve noticed this occur to a whole backyard of nucs – leaving them wiped clean out of honey by means of the tip of a robust springtime float, after looking at heavy robbing obviously going down all the way through morning foraging with very little combating on the entrances. The foragers of the nucs gave the impression to simply proceed with standard foraging, whilst robbers from in other places went in an out with out interference.
- When now we have a nectar float on, robbers temporarily descend upon combs of ripening nectar if we pull them from hives.However on the similar time in the similar backyard, the place now we have returned hive our bodies containing various combs with patches of sealed honey, stacked large open for robbing, the ample bees display no passion.
It’s lovely transparent that scouts and foragers are exquisitely delicate to (and cue into) explicit scents with which they’ve realized to go together with a candy praise. Alternatively, they will forget about the smell of uncovered honey to which they’ve no longer but related to a praise.
Sensible software: All one want to do to exhibit how intently tied smell is to robbing, is to feed sugar syrup with added smell to a bunch of colonies all the way through a dearth.
BACK TO WHAT HAPPENS UPON COLONY COLLAPSE
The place Peck and Seeley ran their find out about there’s a mid-September nectar float in Ithaca, NY) [[2]], with a particular goldenrod smell. Since their mite-donor colonies collapsed in late-September, they might most probably were emitting the smell of ripening goldenrod nectar. That may have made them very sexy to scout bees from different hives on the lookout for any supply of that smell (because the bloom would were really fizzling out, and the scouts and foragers would have already been educated to affiliate that individual smell with a candy praise). Thus we’d be expecting speedy robbing force on any collapsing colonies to happen.
Alternatively, the place I are living, the everyday remark is that “my colony used to be robust in August, after which the bees all at once disappeared, leaving a hive stuffed with honey, however with none bees.” I’ve noticed it various instances myself, and heard it time and again from the ones coming to buy substitute nucs the following yr.
Sensible software: Our collapsing hives don’t comprise any ripening nectar, so even a handful of bees are in a position to shield them. Or even after the ones final bees are long gone, the deadout ceaselessly sits for days or even weeks sooner than it in the end will get robbed. If the bees are all long gone by the point robbing takes position, then there wouldn’t be any are living mites left to switch onto the robbers (any mites nonetheless in final sealed brood can be not able to flee throughout the cappings.).
So the query to me used to be, does such loss of robbing all the way through cave in happen somewhere else. So I requested another beekeepers world wide.
A SURVEY ON WHETHER ROBBING TAKES PLACE AT COLLAPSE
I put out a request to individuals of the Bee-L dialogue staff to fill out a survey. I requested them the next questions:
- Your area? (state, nation, province, and many others).
- The standard duration of varroa/DWV collapses for your area? (month – month).
- Do varroa/DWV collapses for your house normally happen all the way through or straight away after a nectar float, or all the way through a dearth? (all the way through float, straight away after, dearth)
- Do the collapsed hives get robbed out straight away or later? (straight away or later).
Fifty-one beekeepers answered; their solutions are in Desk 1 (names redacted).
Desk 1. Survey on observations of colony cave in and robbing. Be aware what number of respondents mentioned that robbing happens later, moderately than all the way through cave in.
I realized that Dr. Peck’s revealed paper [[3]] incorporated the next:
As a result of it’s been noticed that bees in some places don’t readily rob susceptible colonies within the autumn (Randy Oliver, pers. comm.), it’s totally imaginable that the robbing-driven “mite bomb” phenomenon that we noticed in New York state would possibly range from the “mite bomb” phenomenon somewhere else, the place drifting would possibly play a bigger position, or robbing a smaller one.
MY CONCLUSIONS FROM THE SURVEY RESPONSES
Robbing of collapsing (versus collapsed) hives can obviously lead to mite switch from the hive being robbed to the robbing hive, however simplest in the ones spaces during which robbing happens on the time of cave in.
- Colonies stored in spaces with lengthy winters cave in later within the season—most probably as a result of varroa buildup begins later.Those colonies ceaselessly cave in when the elements is underneath flight temperature, so no robbing or mite waft can happen.
- In Mediterranean climates with summer season dearths, cave in seems to seldom be related to robbing.I believe that that is because of scouts or robbers locally no longer associating the slight smell of the well-cured honey in the ones collapsing hives with a praise.
- An exception to the above is the place Africanized bees are established, comparable to within the southern U.S. (together with Southern California) the place the robbing force by means of AHB can also be intense.
- Alternatively, in spaces the place there’s a nectar float happening or really fizzling out all the way through the cave in of a colony, the ones hives can face speedy exploitation by means of robbers all the way through their means of cave in. I believe that that is because of scouts, foragers, and robbers locally having realized to affiliate the smell of that ripening nectar with a praise.
RELATIONSHIP TO BEE AND MITE DRIFT
So in Mediterranean areas, there is probably not a lot mite immigration because of rob outs of collapsing colonies. However that also leaves the query of what occurs to the entire bees and mites in the ones collapsing hives? (They are going to vanish, however no longer into skinny air). Different research point out that they don’t seem to turn up in close by colonies to any nice extent. Practice the result of my box trial with tagged bees to peer what took place at my group.
A HUMOROUS ANECDOTE REGARDING TRAINING BEES TO A SCENT
Years in the past I pulled into an outyard all the way through our August dearth, and spotted a scrawled handwritten observe on best of a hive. A neighbor had written that he were attacked in his driveway by means of our bees!
Incredulous, I drove over to peer what came about. He sheepishly apologized, since he had since learned that he hadn’t if truth be told been attacked. Then he defined what had came about.
He informed me that he used to be a Dr. Pepper “junkie,” consuming a couple of cans an afternoon, and threw the empty cans right into a recycling can in his storage. At the day of the “match” he had unintentionally left the door open, and returned to a storage stuffed with hungry bees scavenging the rest sugary residues within the cans.
Come nightfall, after the bees had long gone house, he closed the storage door.
By way of midday of the next day to come there have been not more bees to be noticed across the storage. Pleased with his victory, whilst status within the driveway he opened a can of Dr. Pepper to rejoice. Overlooked foragers nonetheless on the lookout for the smell of the day prior to this’s prize straight away descended upon the can in his hand. Fortunately he didn’t do anything else silly that would possibly have resulted in a sting.
I counseled him for having educated the bees to the smell of Dr. Pepper, gave him a case of honey, and all used to be effectively.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to honor my overdue good friend Tim Madeira, with whom I constructed our demo cage, in a while sooner than he hastily gave up the ghost. Appreciation to Drs. David Peck and Tom Seeley. And thank you to people who stuffed out my survey. Dr. Peppers throughout!
CITATIONS AND NOTES
[1] Smith, B & C Burden (2014). A proboscis extension reaction protocol for investigating behavioral plasticity in bugs: software to fundamental, biomedical, and agricultural analysis. Magazine of Visualized Experiments (91): e51057.
[2] Seeley, TD (1995) The Knowledge of the Hive, p. 44.
[3] Peck DT & TD Seeley (2019) Mite bombs or robber lures? The jobs of drifting and robbing in Varroa destructortransmission from collapsing honey bee colonies to their neighbors. PLoS ONE 14(6): e0218392.