212 ROBBING. 
CHAPTER XIV. 
ROBBING. 
GENERAL REMARKS. 
Robbing is often a source of loss to the careless apiarian. 
It is frequent in spring, and at any time in warm weather, 
when there is a scarcity of honey. It is very annoying, 
and is sometimes a source of contention among neighbors, 
when perhaps neither is to blame, farther than for igno- 
rance. The person keeping the most bees, must expect to 
be held accountable for all the losses in the neighborhood, 
whether they occur from mismanagement, or want of 
management, and if he escapes without being charged 
with those losses due to hundreds of causes, he ought 
to be thankful. It is often thought if a person has but 
one stock, and another has ten, that the ten will combine 
to plunder the one. This conclusion is not warranted by 
facts; I can discover no collusion between different fami- 
lies of the same apiary. It is true that when one colony 
finds another weak and defenceless, possessing treasures, 
they have no conscientious scruples about carrying them 
off to the last particle, notwithstanding that they revel in 
abundance at home; and it is most frequently the case 
that the strongest colonies are most given to this despica- 
ble habit. The hurry and bustle attending the plunder, 
seldom escape the notice of other hives, and when one 
hive has been robbed, perhaps two-thirds or all of the 
other colonies have participated in the offence. 
When honey is being gathered largely from natural 
sources, little apprehension of robbing need be entertained. 
At such times honey may often be Jeft exposed, without 
receiving the slightest attention from the bees. We have 
taken tons of honey with the extractor, in the open air, 
when it was most freely exposed, without exciting their 
