'Robber bees' invade apiarist's shop in attempted honey heist
30 comments
·September 11, 2025jjk166
NoMoreNicksLeft
I sometimes wonder when we see their weird behaviors like this, if there isn't a new dance "word", that just happens too infrequently to have been documented. The syntax/grammar for butt-dancing is pretty simple, and I don't think there's any documented that could lead them to sneak in through a broken door and search interior spaces.
afandian
Can confirm. When you’re removing honey frames or hive parts that have had honey spilled on them you have to be on the lookout for scouts. One or two can quickly escalate into dozens. And they have no qualms about coming indoors.
bregma
We always leave our harvested frames outside until after dark because (a) the bees go to "sleep" at night and (2) at the time of year we're usually harvesting the temperature drops into the single digits (Celsius). But the problem is not usually robbers, it's defenders from the hive you just harvested.
afandian
Don’t you find cold stowaways hiding between the frames the next day? I have in the past, when I’ve missed one or two.
xandrius
Basically protecting their strage from the real robbers, from their perspective.
gus_massa
In a bakery like 3 block away from my home, most days there are like 20 bees trying to steal the sweet cover over the pastries. But the front wall of the business is almost completely made of glass, so they can't escape.
vardump
From a bee's point of view humans are the robbers.
stronglikedan
the good bees know it's symbiotic
Kye
Humans provide a sturdy, safe place to build hives and all they ask for in return is some of the excess honey. Bees make way more than they can use. Humans will also cart them around to food sources so they never have to worry about finding it. Seems like a sweet deal.
yesfitz
This is a bad take on the farming of an invasive species.
Bees don't make more honey than they can use. They make what they can and have reserves for Winter and growing in the Spring. Do you pay your landlord everything you'd otherwise save?
I've never seen a bee colony "worry" about finding food. They'll travel within a one mile radius for foraging, and four to five miles for water. Colonies will also leave a hive, or swarm (split into 2 colonies) if there is not enough resources for them.
It's not a deal. They don't understand what's happening. If you're going to take their honey, at least don't make up some weird fantasy where they're happy about it.
bregma
Honeybees are domestic animals that have been selectively bred over millennia to overproduce. It's like dairy cows. If a dairy cow produced that much milk naturally, either her udders or her calf would explode.
The rest I can agree with.
OhMeadhbh
I agree with everything you're saying. But I am a bully who likes the taste of honey. A prisoner to desire, no doubt I will not be liberated from saṃsāra anytime soon.
stavros
What do they do with all the honey? Is there any downside to us taking it? I don't know anything about bees.
card_zero
Or unhappy about it.
someuser2345
> It's not a deal. They don't understand what's happening.
So what? Mutualism happens all the time in nature, even if neither party is consciously aware of it. The relationship between humans and bees is very similar to the relationship between coral polyps and algae; the algae make sugars for the polyps, and polyps provide protection for the algae.
NoMoreNicksLeft
Protection from predators and (as best can be managed) from disease. Supplemental food when foraged resources are insufficient. Protection from extreme weather. We spend millions of dollars researching how to combat bee diseases. They've been glorified since antiquity (go look up all the old manuscripts where they've illustrated people dressing up like bees). Nothing weird about it even if it is a fantasy. Humanity likes the honey bee.
>It's not a deal.
We will spend fortunes and invent new science to prevent their extinction. Whether they understand it or not, they grabbed a real bargain.
russellbeattie
New word for me today: "apiarist"/"apiary". Never knew bee keepers had a more formal name, though it makes sense.
Dad joke: It would be more apt if instead of a-piary, it was "b-piary".
OhMeadhbh
So a "swarm" is the collective noun for bees. But I couldn't find a collective noun for apiarists. I propose "stung" as in "a stung of beekeepers."
afandian
A swarm is actually a reproductive process. It looks like a mass of bees, but it has a specific purpose and composition.
(Although maybe you’re right colloquially)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarming_(honey_bee)
A load of bees engaged in robbing behaves entirely differently from a swarm, which is a magical thing to interact with.
OhMeadhbh
I'm just repeating what I found on the intarwebs: https://englishgrammarhere.com/collective-nouns/collective-n...
neonnoodle
Ironic coming from someone named "mead"!
grilledchickenw
Jason Statham in "The Apiarist" doesn't have the same ring to it
NoMoreNicksLeft
If you'd seen the movie, you'd realize that it couldn't have been more ridiculous even if that had been the title.
nilamo
"Secret Backup NSA" isn't as catchy
duskwuff
Bonus word: if you want to sound all fancy, beekeeping is also known as apiculture.
throwup238
And soldiers who use bees in battle are called the apilry
pogue
Please tell me there's a video of this somewhere
TZubiri
CBE 2025-833
OhMeadhbh
Is it just me or would anyone else buy a video game based on this premise?
It sorta reminds me of "Wax or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees."
Thinking about it from the bee's perspective, this is like raiding the lair of an eldritch horror for gold. A beekeeper is just a funny looking bear-thing that takes honey sometimes, but the shop of a beekeeper is full of devices beyond a bee's comprehension, more honey than a bee would ever see in its lifetime just all sitting around, its own sun which can turn on and off. To find yourself in such a place by accident must be a crazy experience, convincing your brethren to attack it by shaking your butt is on another level.