Late-October robbing at 24°C in Georgia — my entrance setup and how I spot the hive that's being stripped

Twenty-two years in middle Georgia, 40-odd colonies. October here isn't a wind-down, it's a knife fight. Days still hitting 24°C, nothing much coming in, and every colony in the county looking for an easy meal. I lose more colonies to robbing in October than to anything winter throws at us. How I read it, because beginners often can't tell robbing from a good flying day. Robbers hover and weave in front of the box instead of flying straight in; they check the seams and the corners and under the roof, not just the entrance. There's fighting on the landing board and bees rolling in pairs on the ground. And the giveaway: the activity doesn't stop at dusk the way foraging does, and it's frantic rather than steady. My setup from September: entrances down to about a finger's width on everything, robbing screens on anything small, no feeding in daylight, no spilled syrup, no open comb anywhere in the yard, and the weak colonies moved to the end of the row or united. That last one is the real fix. A colony too weak to defend a reduced entrance is not going to be saved by gear.