You got it...drifting into another hive, I don't think it's much of
a problem, they get past the guard bees just like a yellow jacket
would. When you think about of giving a hive a brood frames with nurse bees into a strange hive...which is done often, this frame is excepted by the other bees.
I have shaken out hives without a queen and they find a new
home. The same happens with robbing...other bees can past the guard bees cleaning out a weak hive.

How would I recognize robbing? I'm wondering why my colony has made so little honey.

Hard to say,...I don't think it ever happened to me, at least inside the hive, outside I knew when I took honey super off when nectar flow was over, it wasn't a big deal until I blew them off.

One thing,... one has to learn to read your hive with bee activity, a large hive has lots of traffic and there will be no concern in robbing this one, a small hive, one has to make sure to put entrance reducer on, this way I never had trouble. When you see a normal low hive activity at the small hive and next day ALLOT of traffic, you could have a problem, then opening the hive and see the dwindling in honey store will confirm this.

Thanks, Konrad. I'm loving my new hobby, but it's hard to figure out all the indicators. I have, however, recently made the acquaintance of my queen.

{{gwi:432703}}