The books / Pests, Predators and Robbing / chapter 2 of 14
What a dearth looks like from the hive
All chapters
- 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
You will not see the dearth start, you will see its effects a week or two later:
- Foraging traffic at the entrance drops off even on a warm, sunny afternoon, because there is nothing worth flying to.
- Guard bees get noticeably more short-tempered at the entrance, testing every bee that lands rather than waving foragers straight through.
- Stores that looked comfortable in June start shrinking instead of growing, and a hive that feels reassuringly heavy when you lift its back edge in May can feel alarmingly light by August.
A first-year colony without a full box of capped honey behind it can go from fine to starving in a matter of days once the dearth is underway, not weeks.
That is why the lift-and-check habit matters more here than anywhere else in the calendar.