using entrance reducers to help prevent robbing

[Satch]

Here in Central MO the weather has left us feeding our little friends.  The stronger hives love to get free meals from the weaker and I usually use grass or other material to help reduce the entrance.  Put SBB on three of the remaining hives this weekend and decided to put the entrance reducers on with the large opening.  Did I mess up or let it be.

THe bees didn't like it at first, but they seemed to settle down after a while.

[BjornBee]

Beekeepers are notorious in making entrances way bigger than they need to be. The design of the standard allows a inch or better high opening, all the way across the front. And yet I have TBH with no more than two round 1 inch holes and they deal with it fine, with no landing board. Landing boards by the way allow robbing.

Beekeepers are also notorious on not culling, combining, or equalizing hive strength. Making sure your hives are equal strength, or at least not what one would call "One weak, and one strong" eliminates the robbing that comes with fall feeding.

Fall season means bees become aggressive and will rob, unseen at other times of the year.

So.....limit the entrances, and equal out your hives.

[AllenF]

I normally put reducers on when I start a hive out and it stays in there until I clean it out years later when I find it dead.   Scrap wood works well to block the entrance up.  Just leave a gap for the bees.   

[Finski]

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Entrance is not the main place where bees defend their home.
When a robber goes on combs, there it meet hundreds of workers which identify the wrong odor of bee.

If you look inside the hive, where is robbig on, main battle is on all combs.


So, to defend their hive, bees need a room, which is all occupyed. If there are empty places, where robbers may move freely, it makes robbing easy to start.
If robbers go out alive with honey load, they alarm more robber gang and pressure may rise too strong.
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