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ROBBING 
supply of honey has been exhausted in the 
one nucleus the robbers will hover around 
all other entrances, and on finding one 
poorly defended will get in more bad work. 
During a dearth of honey there are always 
some bees that make a business of smell¬ 
ing around, and it is a wise precaution al¬ 
ways to have the entrances of nuclei con¬ 
tracted to a width where only one or two 
bees can pass at a time. 
One of the most prolific causes of rob¬ 
bing is a warped cover on an old hive, the 
corner of which has split open. All such 
makeshifts should be replaced. In an 
emergency a handful of mud plastered into 
the opening or crack, or some cotton stuffed 
in, will go a long way toward preventing 
serious trouble later on. During a good 
honey flow small cracks large enough for 
bees to get thru do no particular harm, but 
during a honey-dearth extra precautions 
must be taken. Weak colonies especially 
cannot defend several entrances, and that 
is why poorly fitting covers or leaky hives 
must not be tolerated. The robbers seem 
to realize that the regular entrance is more 
likely to be well guarded, and that is why 
they are often seen trying to crawl thru 
some unguarded crack. 
HOW TO STOP ROBBING. 
As to the best mode of procedure, a good 
deal will depend on circumstances. When 
bees in the whole apiary are robbing in a 
wholesale way from the honey-house, or 
from any place where a supply of honey 
or syrup is kept, the obvious remedy is to 
cut off the supply. 
Bees soon stop robbing when all sweets 
within their reach are removed or so pro¬ 
tected that they cannot get at them; but 
even then the apiary will be out of balance 
for the rest of the day, and more or less 
for two or three weeks following, because 
the bees will be trying to find where they 
can get more sweets. 
Sometimes robbing is started by some 
one in the neighborhood making sweet 
pickles, canning fruit, or doing anything 
that causes a strong odor of sweet or sour 
during its preparation. The only thing the 
beekeeper can do is to have the house 
screened; or if the case is very bad, and 
the bees keep on “sticking their noses into 
other people’s business,” the entrances of 
all the hives should be smoked with tobacco 
smoke. Half a dozen puffs of smoke 
should be blown into each entrance, one 
after the other. In half an hour the dose 
should be repeated. This will cause the 
bees to quiet down until such time as the 
canning or the pickle-making is over at the 
house where bees are “making themselves 
too familiar.” 
The best treatment for a general robbing 
thruout the apiary is prevention. The 
screen door and other openings into the 
honey-house should be self-closing. Un¬ 
less they are, some one will be almost sure 
to forget and leave one of them open. If 
the doors are not self-closing, all the honey 
or syrup stored in the building should be 
put into hives, shipping cases, cans, bar¬ 
rels, or any receptacle where bees can be 
kept from helping themselves; then, if per¬ 
chance the door is left open, no harm will 
be done. 
Let it be supposed that a colony has 
been overpowered, and that its own bees 
are making no defense, realizing, probably, 
that resistance is useless. If anything is 
to be done to save the colony, it must be 
done quickly. One way is to grasp a hand¬ 
ful of long grass, strew it closely around 
the entrance, and then spray or sprinkle a 
dipperful of water on it, and scatter more 
wet grass over the entrance. A very little 
carbolic acid added to the water makes the 
Spray more offensive to robbers. The in¬ 
vaders will not, as a rule, crawl thru the 
wet grass to get into the hive, while on the 
other hand those that have already entered 
the hive will get out and return to their 
homes. In the mean time the regular in¬ 
mates of the hive, as soon as they are given 
a little assistance, will begin to set up a 
defense. The grass should be kept wet for 
at least an hour or two, and possibly till 
sundown; but before strewing the gTass 
the entrance should be contracted so that 
only one or two bees can pass at a time. 
The entrance should never he closed entire¬ 
ly, no matter how bad the bees are robbing. 
On a hot day the large number of robbers 
in the hive, together with the regular in¬ 
mates, would be almost sure to smother to 
death. 
Another and a better way to treat colo¬ 
nies or nuclei that are not making a good 
defense is to carry them down cellar or put 
