\n<\/p>\n
A Canadian beekeeper has described fending off thousands of \u201crobber bees\u201d as they raided her shop in a brazen attempt to steal honey.<\/p>\n
Christine McDonald, who owns Rushing River Apiaries in the British Columbia city of Terrace, said she entered her shop to find it overrun by the swarm.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that\u2019s the most panicked I have felt \u2026 There\u2019s thousands of bees, I don\u2019t know where they\u2019re coming from, and I need to protect all of the honey,\u201d she told CBC News.<\/p>\n
Raids of rival hives are common after hot, dry summers, when a \u201cnectar gap\u201d emerges between spring blooms and autumn flowers. Larger bee colonies also need more food to collect and store.<\/p>\n
\u201cFall beekeeping is very intense \u2013 trying to help bees hunker down against other bees and wasps and keep the food stores that they\u2019ve worked so hard for,\u201d said McDonald, who has previously seen raids on her outdoor hives \u2013 but never on her store.<\/p>\n
Experts warn against attempting to stop a \u201crobbing frenzy\u201d and suggest covering hives with wet blankets to ward off invaders.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen a hive is robbed, the invading bees kill bees and may even kill the queen. They tear open wax cells to get at the honey inside and can remove large amounts of honey very quickly,\u201d said one beekeeping guide. \u201cWorse, ripping open cells spreads the smell of honey far and wide, which attracts other invaders like wasps, yellow jackets, and hornets. These insects are even more aggressive, and will promptly kill off any bees left in the hive.\u201d<\/p>\n
McDonald says she avoided disaster by throwing a tarp over the equipment and products, but ended up \u201csacrificing her bathroom\u201d in order to trap the invading bees.<\/p>\n
By leaving the lights on in the room, she lured the bees away from their target. McDonald later scoured the shop in search of ingress points, discovering that the bees had entered through a gap in the door frame, which has since been sealed.<\/p>\n
She said it took four or five days before the ravenous bees stopped trying to return to her shop.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think they\u2019ve learned that, nope, there\u2019s no more food here,\u201d she said. \u201cWe can\u2019t get in.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Canadian beekeeper has described fending off thousands of \u201crobber bees\u201d as they raided her shop in a brazen attempt to steal honey. Christine McDonald, who owns Rushing River Apiaries in the British Columbia city of Terrace, said she entered her shop to find it overrun by the swarm. \u201cI think that\u2019s the most panicked<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20127,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[12377,1646,318,4530,12378,12379,10214,12380,2070,12382,3202,12381],"class_list":{"0":"post-20126","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-apiary","9":"tag-bees","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-canadian","12":"tag-foils","13":"tag-heist","14":"tag-honey","15":"tag-marauding","16":"tag-owner","17":"tag-robber","18":"tag-store","19":"tag-swarm"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}