The Worst Robbing I've Ever Heard Of

My biggest, most prolific hive, which is the mother to about four or five others got robbed the other week.  I'm not sure why.  I have never seen robbing on this scale.  I have never seen a strong hive get robbed.

Every drop of honey was robbed from this hive, I don't know how much, I hadn't checked this hive in a few weeks, but there was probably plenty.  After the robbing was done, after the bees gave up and left, I dismantled the hive, removing the top three boxes and placed a frame of honey in to avoid starvation.  The population of the hive had been reduced drastically.  There was a pile of dead bees in front of it more than an inch thick.

One of the changes I'm making due to this occurrence is to begin to place bees in outyards.  I'm developing a custom pallet in order to have four hive units that can be moved to other places.  The first one I have lined up is my church's farm where they need a little pollination.  It's also where I hope to sell nucs retail style in the future.  I'm going to try to limit my home yard to ten hives.  If all works well, perhaps I can move beyond sixteen total hives in the future.

Pictures of the new apiary.

Here it is.  You can see how I've been clearing trees in the background.  The hives used to reside back in those trees and were not visible in the summer, but I got tired of the chigger bites.

I'm also more closely keeping track of the vertical component of hive placement.  I only cared before if they were about to fall over.  Now that they are in the open, they need to be a bit more pretty.

If you're wondering, I do regret the pink.  But it was cheap.  I don't regret the color so much as that it was interior paint and therefore doesn't prevent rust and it wears off easily.  I'm going to try to take the wire brush to them and then repaint them when it gets warm enough to do so.