What To Do When Your Beehive Is Being Robbed

Robbing is a natural but potentially devastating behavior that can destroy weak colonies. Unlike human theft, robbing in the bee world is a survival mechanism that can quickly spiral out of control, making it essential for beekeepers to recognize the signs early and take swift action.

What Is Beehive Robbing?

Beehive robbing occurs when bees or wasps invade a colony to steal their stored honey and nectar. This isn't random aggression—it's a calculated survival strategy that typically happens when foraging opportunities become scarce. The invading bees, called "robber bees," will fight the defending colony's guard bees to access precious food stores.

During a robbing event, you'll witness what appears to be aerial combat around the hive entrance, with bees grappling, stinging, and falling to the ground. The robber bees are remarkably persistent and will continue their assault until they've either been successfully repelled or have completely overwhelmed the defending colony.

What makes robbing particularly concerning for beekeepers is its potential to escalate rapidly. Once robber bees discover a vulnerable hive, they'll recruit more members from their colony to help them rob. Within hours, hundreds of foreign bees can descend upon a single hive, creating a feeding frenzy that can strip a colony of its entire food supply.

Recognizing the Signs of Robbing

Identifying robbing early is crucial for intervention. Here are the key indicators that your hive is under attack:

Fighting Bees: The most obvious sign is aggressive combat near the hive entrance. You'll see bees locked in deadly embrace, rolling around and stinging each other on the lid or landing board. Dead and dying bees will accumulate on the ground and landing board.

Unusual Flight Patterns: Robber bees fly differently than your colony's foragers. They'll hover around the hive entrance, darting back and forth as they look for opportunities to enter. Their flight pattern is erratic and purposeful, unlike the steady, direct flight of returning foragers.

Shiny, Black Appearance of Intruders: Robber bees often appear shinier and blacker than your resident bees.

Attempts to Enter Through Cracks: Desperate robber bees will try to find alternative entrances, exploring gaps in the hive body, loose joints, or any opening they can exploit. You might see bees crawling along the sides and back of the hive.

Frenzied Activity: This is the biggest sign your sign is going through intense robbing. The overall activity level at the hive's entrances become chaotic and aggressive, completely different from normal foraging behavior. The sound is also different—more high-pitched buzzing and angry humming. Watch this video of a hive going through intense robbing. 

Small Pieces of Wax Cappings on the Landing Board: If the robbing has been successful, you might see bees emerging with white wax cappings stuck to their bodies or on the landing board. This is evidence that honey cells have been torn open and robbed.

Fast Decrease of Honey Weight and Honey Storage: If you open your hive and notice that there is considerably less food that there was just last week, that is a sign your hive is being robbed. Hive scales are a fun way to monitor your hive's activity without having to open it so much and will give you valuable insight into how the bees are doing. Here is a link to the hive scale I use.

No Guard Bees: I say this often in my videos and blog, spend time observing your hive's entrance. I cannot stress enough how valuable it is to get to know your bees by observing them at their entrance. When you do this, in addition to getting to know what a healthy and calm hive's activity and buzzing is link, you will also notice bees looking out the entrance at you. These are guard bees. When robbing is occurring, these busy are busy. You will not see bees calmly standing on the landing board looking out at you.

Why Robbing Happens

Understanding the root causes of robbing helps you predict when your hives might be most vulnerable. Robbing typically occurs under specific circumstances:

Dearth Periods: The most common trigger is a nectar dearth—periods when few flowers are blooming and natural food sources are scarce. Late summer and early fall are prime robbing seasons in many regions, as the main nectar flow ends but colonies still need to build winter stores.

Weak or Stressed Colonies: Colonies weakened by disease, poor queens, small populations, or recent splits are prime targets. They lack sufficient guard bees to defend their entrance effectively, making them easy marks for opportunistic robbers.

Exposed Food Sources: Beekeeper mistakes often trigger robbing. Leaving used beekeeping equipment by the beehives, spilling syrup during feeding, feeding bees outside the hive, using an entrance feeder, leaving the hive oen for over 20 minutes during inspections or leaving frames of honey outside the hive while harvesting can attract robber bees and wasps.

Queenless Colonies: Hives without queens often have poor morale and reduced defensive behavior, making them vulnerable targets.

Prevention Strategies

Preventing robbing is far easier than stopping it once it begins. Here are proven strategies to protect your colonies:

Maintain Strong Colonies: The best defense is a strong offense. Keep your colonies populous and healthy with good queens, adequate food stores, low varroa mite levels and proper disease management. Strong colonies can effectively guard their entrances and repel invaders.

Reduce Entrance Size: During dearth periods, reduce hive entrances to one or two bee-spaces. This creates a bottleneck that guard bees can defend more easily. You can use entrance reducers or blocks of wood.

Feed Carefully: When providing supplemental feeding, use internal feeders rather than external ones, and avoid spilling syrup around the hive. Clean up any spills immediately. If it's cooler out, do not any supplement to the syrup or feed in small quantities more often. The primary purpose to adding supplements to syrup is to prevent it from spoiling, not for honey bee health.

Avoid Hive Manipulations During Dearth: Don't inspect hives frequently during periods of nectar scarcity and keep the inspections short. Do not harvest honey during a dearth. The sweet smells released during hive manipulation can trigger robbing behavior in nearby colonies.

Strategic Hive Placement: Space hives adequately apart to reduce competition and confusion among colonies. 

Monitor Weather Patterns: Be especially vigilant after periods of rain or drought that interrupt nectar flows. Bees that have been confined for days due to weather are often desperate for food sources when conditions improve.

Monitor Your Hives: Keep an eye on your bees. Instead of opening the hive and doing a full inspection, spend 5-10 minutes a few times a week observing the entrance and open the hive every 10-14 days. 

Adequate Food: Robbing happens when food is scarce. Planting flowers that bloom during these times will help your bees immensely. Some late summer and fall blooming flowers bees love are sunflowers, pumpkin, mountain mint, ad goldenrod. there are varieties of goldenrod that are native to North America and mountain mint and sunflowers are also native. 

Wasp Traps: I am not a fan of killing insects just because I don't like them, but wasps can become a huge threat to the safety of your honey beehives. Trapping wasp queens in spring or setting out a bait trap in late summer/fall can help your honey bees quite a bit. Some years the wasp population is greater than others. 

What to Do If Robbing Is Already Occurring

If you discover robbing in progress, immediate action is essential to prevent total colony collapse:

 Restrict the Entrance: Immediately reduce the entrance to the smallest possible opening on your entrance reducer. 

Remove Attractions: Eliminate anything that might be attracting robbers, including spilled syrup, open syrup inside the hive, entrance feeders, open honey containers, or wet honey supers left near the hives.

Move the Hive: If possible, and robbing is extreme, you can move the affected hive to a location at least three miles away for several days. This breaks the robbers' orientation and gives the colony time to recover.

Close the Hive Temporarily: In severe cases, you might need to completely close the hive for 24-48 hours, ensuring adequate ventilation through screened areas. Provide water inside the hive during closure. This robber screen gives the hive ventilation, but keeps robbers from getting inside. There is also an upper entrance so you can let any robbers already inside the hive to get out without more robbers coming inside.

Create Confusion: Place a wet sheet or towel over the hive so that it drapes over the entrance. Make sure it still allows air flow and bees to get out of the hive. This will mask scents coming from the hive as well as make it difficult for robbers to figure out how to get inside.

Long-term Recovery and Management

After successfully stopping a robbing episode, focus on helping the affected colony recover. Assess their food stores and population strength. They may need supplemental feeding and might benefit from combining with another small colony if severely weakened.

Consider the lessons learned from the robbing incident. Was the colony too weak? Did environmental conditions contribute? Were there management practices that inadvertently triggered the event? Use these insights to improve your beekeeping practices and prevent future occurrences.

Conclusion

Robbing is a natural bee behavior that can have devastating consequences for unprepared beekeepers. By understanding the signs, causes, and prevention methods, you can protect your colonies and maintain healthy apiaries even during challenging dearth periods. Remember that prevention is always preferable to intervention—maintaining strong colonies and following careful management practices during vulnerable periods will serve you far better than trying to stop robbing once it begins.

The key to successful beekeeping lies in observation and proactive management. Regular monitoring of your colonies, understanding seasonal nectar flows in your area, and maintaining detailed records will help you anticipate and prevent robbing before it becomes a crisis.