The books / Pests, Predators and Robbing / chapter 1 of 14
The dangerous weeks
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- The dangerous weeks
- What a dearth looks like from the hive
- How robbing starts
- The beekeeper rings the bell
- Recognising it
- The entrance reducer
- The robbing screen
- When it is already bad
- Wasps through the year
- Strong colonies repel, weak ones fall
- The trap that works is the spring one
- Mice in October
- Bears
- Leaving them alone
Mark two days on the calendar before the season starts: day 140 and day 195. Between them sits the longest and most dangerous stretch in a beekeeper's year, the summer dearth, when the spring and early-summer flowers have finished and the autumn flow has not yet begun.
Nothing is coming in the front door of the hive, but everything the colony built over the previous months is now sitting inside it: capped honey, drawn comb, brood needing feeding. That combination, nothing flowering outside and plenty stored inside, is exactly what turns a hive into a target.