A bad round of robbing going on in my beeyards right now. A lot of dead bees on the ground. It was a dilemma whether feeding would make it better or worse. I decided to feed and some of them would have starved if I had not. Some were well stocked. It didn't seem to make it any worse but it also didn't stop it. I hosed them off a few times (make it spray like rain...) and settled them down for a while. I put window screen over all the entrances (purposeful or not) and let them settle down for a day then opened up a hole in the screen one bee wide. It's still not as under control as I would like. I'm probably going to have to feed them again before winter it looks like. And I still may have to give them some dry sugar.
Feeding: http://www.bushfarms.com/beesfeeding.htm
I saw this frenzy going on and turned the cover over to block the entrance. They were doing this same thing before I blocked it. They would pile up until they would fall in clumps. I slowed it down to try to see it better.
I consider propolizing a good trait for bees (maybe not for the beekeeper). Here is a mating nuc I found this year. The drilled hole is about 5/8". The reduced hole is about 5/16".
It wasn't working right and then it would and then it wouldn't. This is what I found. It couldn't get out, so I left it and used another smoker. It was finally out after two days.
We needed to feed because of a dearth and we still needed to finish building up the 8 frame nucs for winter. We bought 50 six gallon buckets and bought 3,450 pounds of sugar in 25 lb bags. We worked out the maximum strength we could do with hot water from my tap (140 F) and not have it crystallize out. We put one 25 pound bag in each bucket with a heaping tablespoon of ascorbic acid, then 18 pints of water and stir it with a five gallon paint stirrer. After 10 to 30 minutes we stir it again.
