HOBBING. 



382 



liOBBim;. 



ROBBER-TRAPS. 



We have beenusinpf in our yards, for some 

 years back, various forms of robber-traps. 

 Their purpose is to catch the hardened " old 

 sinners"— bees that are professionals in the 

 art of robbinfj, and which are of but little 

 practical value for the purpose of getting 



Fig. 1. Wire-cloth-cone bee-escape on the inside 

 traps. Note that tlie large end of the cone commun 

 tlie regular entrance of the hive. Robbers pass 

 entrance up through the cone into the hive and are 



honey honestly from the fields. We catch 

 these shiny-backed bets and kill them. 

 While some protest has been raised on the 

 ground that they might be made over into a 

 colony, yet the kind of " old sinners" to 

 which we have referred are useless for any 

 purpose. In a queen-rearing yard the soon- 



er they are out of the way the better for all 

 concerned. As long as they are allowed to 

 }>rey on their honest neighbors they will con- 

 tinue to make work in the yard disagreeable 

 by keeping every colony stirred up and more 

 or less cross, despoil baby nuclei, and make 

 trouble generally. But this is not all. They 

 incite other bees to rob. The 

 force of example is very potent 

 among bees as well as human 

 beings. 



While one does not need to use 

 traps continuously, they are re- 

 quired on occasions; for if a few 

 bees once get started to robbing 

 they will day after day pounce on 

 the combs every time a hive is 

 opened, and render life miserable 

 for their owner and for the baby 

 nuclei. Time and time again in 

 our yards we have restored every 

 thing to absolute order and quiet 

 by the use of the trap. It works 

 like magic; and after the rascals 

 are caught, one will be surprised 

 to note how few bees can make 

 such an uproar as is evidenced 

 by the number in the trap. Their 

 intrinsic value is practically no- 

 thing, even if they were good 

 honest bees. To let them loose 

 would only invite more trouble. 

 The amount of honey that they 

 might gather if they could be "■re- 

 formed" would be a very insig- 

 nificant item. But the amount 

 of damage that they can do in 

 interfering with our queen-rear- 

 ing operations is no small item. 



It has been suggested that, if a 

 robber-trap wdll catch robbers, it 

 will also catch honest bees, and 

 why destroy good property V 

 There is no need for catching 

 any thing but the hardened old 

 sinners— those that we consider 

 hopeless beyond redemption. As 

 explained, we do not run the trap 

 continuously throughout the sea- 

 son — perhaps one or two days in 

 a week, and not even then if no 

 robbei s show up. During the en- 

 tire season at our home yard of 400 colonies 

 and nuclei the total number of robbers that 

 we catch would hardly til] a two-gallon 

 measure; and we venture to say there was 

 not one honest bee out of five hundred in the 

 whole number. It is penny wise and pound 

 foolish to try to save such bees. 



of robber- 

 icates witli 

 at the 

 CHUght. 



