When the main summer bloom ends but the weather stays warm, colonies face a nectar dearth: little or no incoming forage while thousands of foragers are still flying. Idle, hungry foragers start probing neighbouring hives for stored honey instead — robbing — which can strip out and kill a weaker colony in a single afternoon. This scene links dearth severity, hive defences, feeding and mite load into one system so you can see how they interact.
Robbing is contagious: once a few robber bees breach a hive and return home carrying stolen honey, their nestmates recruit fast, and what starts as a trickle can turn into a full-blown robbing frenzy within the hour — which is why narrowing entrances early, before a dearth bites, works far better than reacting after it starts.
A 3D apiary scene links four levers a beekeeper actually controls during a late-summer dearth — how bare the forage is, how wide the entrance stays open, whether an internal syrup feeder is running, and varroa mite load — to see how they combine to raise or lower a colony's robbing risk and winter readiness.
Robber bees (red) intensify as dearth deepens and the entrance stays wide, while a narrowed entrance concentrates guard bees and cuts how far robbers can push in — even under severe dearth.
Drag the dearth severity slider and watch the flower patch wilt and foragers return emptier. Narrow the entrance to watch robber pressure fall, toggle the feeder to see stores trend recover, and raise mite load to see red mites appear on the comb window.
An internal frame feeder keeps syrup scent inside the hive, so it can rebuild stores during a dearth without adding robbing risk the way open feeding in the apiary yard would.