Swarm Traps

After last Winter's surprisingly high losses my bee stocks are a bit low and demand seems to be pushing up the cost of new colonies. Normally I'd be looking at splitting existing colonies to make new ones but at present colonies aren't strong enough for that to be an option so I've decided to make some swarm traps to hopefully catch myself some passing swarms. Through a chance meeting I happen to know where there's  a chap who keeps bees and very unwisely does no swarm control at all so assuming he got some bees through the winter there's a likelihood of swarms from there at some point.

A swarm trap isn't really what it sounds like. It's not so much a trap as a rather nice house with the door left open. It's left out in the hope a passing swarm will spot it and move in. They can be as simple as a bucket or a cardboard container stuck up a tree, an unoccupied hive stuck on a shed roof, a purpose built wooden box and I've just seen a new one that looks like an empty kick bag too. I decided to build a couple of wooden boxes myself to place in trees.

I started roughing out some designs and measurements and designs. They're not the most complex things to build. You just need a box with a hole in it that you can open to remove the bees from. I decided to make mine to hold a few frames which should make bees easier to remove rather than having to deal with wild comb, it also means I can store frames in themm when they're not in use. Depending what you read bees will be seeking a 20-70 litre cavity. Some people use 5 frame National Nucs with success but that's probably on the small side. After some drawing and capacity calculations I decided to save a little time and money by making mine out of cut down brood boxes.

A couple of spare Brood Boxes about to be repurposed

First thing to do was use the trusty table saw to cut the boxes to size. To save time I used two of the existing corner joints already on each box. I cut two sides so that the finished boxes would be 30cm wide. Actually I cut one wrongly so had to do an extra cut and reattach a piece of wood to get one side the right length. Oops. The sides that would become the box fronts I removed some of the screws from the joints and cut them flush to the inside edge. The finger joints that got cut off I just glued them back in place. As swarm boxed they're not going to be weight bearing.

Precision wood butchery

I wanted to be able to put deep frames in and originally planned to use the existing rebate in the box sides to support them, however I decided the boxes would be stronger with an eke at the top to hold them together and increase the space inside for the bees.

Taking shape. The shape is an oblong.

A 1/2"  thick floor was screwed and glued underneath each cut down box and I made a little eke with rebates for the frames. The ekes were attached with nails in guide holes and more wood glue. They were then left for the glue to cure overnight.

Hook for hanging

The plan is to hang the traps from trees so borrowing an idea I saw on YouTube I added a vertical piece of wood with a large hole drilled near the top. My plan is to knock a big nail into a tree and use the hole in the plank as a hook. The vertical piece is going to be stuck between the box and a tree so I used tanalised wood to protect it from damp. It's on the outside of the box so the bees probably won't be making much contact with it. I gave the side that'll be against the box a coat of Shed & Fence paint before attaching it with more screws and glue - don't want the boxes dropping off afterall.

Usually bee hives are fee standing and the roof is able to sit on top, with sides reaching down around the box below, however as these are going to be hung in trees I couldn't do that. I opted to use a hinged roof attaching the hinge to the vertical support. The roof is just cut from some thick plywood.

Toby the Cat handling Quality Control
-yes, he's pretty clueless

I attached a batton to each of the short sides so I had some way to carry the boxes. I do the same thing with brood boxes. The whole lot got an uneven coat of  badly mixed bklack and brown Shed & Fence paint then I cut entrances with a wide drill bit. I actually drilled straight through a screw making one of the entrances which ended the working life of the drill bit which was a bit unfortunate but did give a natural non uniform looking hole.

One door opens..

Once occupied I'll need to move these boxes to get the bees into a hive so the entrances needed some sort of closing mechanism. I opted for a simple rotating door. As a hinge I took a regular wood screw and filed down part of the thread near the top. This went through a hole in the door with a washer between the rotating door and the screw top.

Entrance, Door and Doorstop.

I also added a door stop to reduce the chance of accidentally knocking the door open whilst moving the traps with bees in them. To keep the lids closed I attached a couple of brass plated hooks attached to screw eyes and drilled holes in the battens for the hooks to go into which will secure the roof closed.

Bitumen Paint and closures

I'd already given the roofs a lick of Shed & Fence paint where they don't make contact with the bees but decided to finish the roofs with some flash tape so I could form some sort of drip edge to guide rain away from the boxes. It's a lot more expensive than roof felt but easier to apply and more robust.The tape comes with some water based bitumen paint to prime the surface before applying the tape. I painted both roofs black and went inside to do something more interesting than watch paint dry. A few hours later I went outside and found it'd rained so reapplied the bitumen.

Pretty sure this will be the weakest point.

I think the hinge is the area most likely to suffer rain damage so I painted over the moving part and the side on the roof I also painted with bitumen then flash taped over. The vertical part is going into treated wood so should be okay but when I take them down at the end of the season I might give them a squirt of polyurethane varnish or something for extra protection. I applied the flash tape so it always overlapped and made drip edges by simply folding the tape back onto itself and then back to the underside of the roof. The roofs are larger than the boxes themselves with an obverhang on three sides.

Labelled so mice and birds don't mistake them for birdboxes

A few seconds scrawling on the front with a huge sharpie had the boxes labelled, just in case anyone gets curious and finds them occupied before I do. Each box holds 7 Deep Commercial Frames with a little more space at the bottom than a regular broodbox on a hive floor due to the eke on top. I think they've got a capacity of about 25 litres each. Believe it or not when looking for a new home scout bees measure the capacity of the cavities they find.

I loaded each box with a couple of old frames of dark comb, bees seem to like moldy old comb. Strange. I also gave each a couple of frames of undrawn fresh comb to give any swarms moving in something to do and filled the rest with empty frames. I also added some swarm bait and a little slumgum.

Big nail, that'll do it.

The swarm traps completed the next thing was to put them up trees. I found a couple trees in the area I was thinking of and put a nail in each high enough to keep the boxes just above head height. One tree I was able to climb a few feet, the other I just had to reach up and try not to hammer my thumb. As the holes in the traps wooden supports were fairly large it was easy enough to get them on the nails without being able to see what I was doing.

Once hanging from the nails the traps needed securing so they didn't rock or get blown off. One I stabilised by wrapping with a bungee chord, the other wasn't level so I wedged a piece of wood behind it and wrapped a ratchet strap around the whole thing to hold it still.

Half a brood box stuck up a tree.
Bees won't find that suspicious at all.

I've not tried this approach before and my placement of the traps is based more on them being out of the way of people and for myself to be able to remove them easily rather than the best position to attract bees but I'm going to see how it goes. I've also filled an empty hive with frames and a swarm lure at the apiary too so now I'll just cross my fingers and wait.

The second trap, also up a tree.

Swarm Collecting

This year I've had surprisingly few calls about swarms. None in fact. However in early July an ex posted on Facebook about a swarm in a tree at her parents' so I offered to pick it up. I get free bees, they get no bees, the bees get homed, everyone wins :) I rolled up in the early evening walked to the door knocked and was told I'd just walked straight past the swarm. I looked round and there they were. In a low tree at about shoulder height in a very round cluster - the kind of thing you'd expect to see in a text book.

Well bee-haved, ready to be-hived.
Beekeeping is 90% punnery.

They were on a single small branch so I thought it's be easiest if I just cut the branch then deposit it complete with the bees in the 5 frame Nuc I'd brought with me. Simple plan. It actually turned out to be a flawed plan. Taking a firm hold of the branch on one side of the swarm I cut the branch on the other side of the swarm as planned. Instead of carefully carrying the cluster to the Nuc and dropping them in I watched the cut branch in my hand bent double dropping half the bees on the floor below. Excellent stuff. I'd gone from having the swarm in a tight easy to move cluster to a couple of thousand bees in a pile on the ground, a thousand or so on a floppy twig and a few hundred on the wing looking to form a new cluster in the tree.

I assumed the bees on the twig were probably the oiriginal centre of the cluster which should include the Queen so I deposited these in the 5 frame Nuc I'd brought along with a frame at either side. I then used another frame of drawn comb to remove the bees from the ground and shake them into the box. They're attracted to the comb so when I held it to the bees on the ground they climbed onto it for me to move them to the Nuc. When I'd got the majority off the ground I turned my attention to the fliers who kept returning to the tree. Giving it a shake here and there to dislodge the landed bees and a few puffs of smoke to mask any pheromone they eventually gave up on it in favour of the workers Nosanoving at the Nuc entrance. I left the Nuc on the ground and returned a few hours later.

Almost there

When I got back the bees had gone to the Nuc as hoped. There were a lot hanging about outside the entrance though -unsurprising as it was a particularly warm July evening. I used some gaff tape to secure the crown board and used some more tape and a cardboard box to make a cover for the front which would leave room for the bees outside the entrance, after all I didn't want them flying about in the car with me.

Most of this happened in transit.

It was a slow drive to the out apiary but I got there with relatively few bees getting loose in the car. I carried the Nuc complete with gaff tape and cardboard to the hive stands and  removed the packaging. During the drive bees had been coming out of the entrance filling the gap between the Nuc and the cardboard, luckily the gaff tape held for the journey.

Home sweet home

I put the Nuc roof in place and left the bees to it. When I did my next inspection I was relieved to find the bees had chosen to remain in the Nuc. I'd used a small National Travel Nuc I had sat in the shed for this lot. It took me a while to locate the Queen. I'm pretty sure she was still a virgin when I caught the swarm as it took me so long to find her and it was a long time before eggs started appearing too. When I did find her I noticed she had a very yellow abdomen compared to most of my other Queens. I considered raising the swarm as a new colony but later decided to use her to replace a swarmy queen in an existing full size colony and united the workers to an existing hive that needed a boost.

Swarm Lures and Awkward Bees

A couple of my colonies have been very swarmy of late. I suspect part of the problem is the swarms I caught last year are from stocks with a predisposition for swarming -in hindsight the fact they'ed swarmed for me to catch in the first place could've been a clue as to what to expect from them. The huge swarm I caught in July had been doing really well, raising a strong colony and filling Supers but a couple of weeks ago one morning the queen absconded taking a large contingent of workers with her leaving a supersedure cell and no swarm cells oddly enough. A couple of weeks ago a cast swarm went and sat in a neighbours fruit bush too and last weekend I collected a swarm from a fruit tree near my apiary. Not sure who's they were but the queen was marked blue so they've obviously slipped past someone's swarm control. As well as the usual weekly inspections and swarm control I decided to put out a bait hive and put swarm lure on a post so any swarms they managed to get by wouldn't go far. Looking on eBay for swarm lures I opted for the cheapest seller who's stock was in the UK and ordered 10 lures for £8.49 from someone uktrader2011. They seem to sell a lot of body piercing stuff as well as swarm lures and the text in the advert suggests the seller uses this stuff themselves and linked to a couple of videos of the seller showing the stuff in use. Good enough for me. Take my money!.

Swarm lures, store them carefully.

The lures came in little test tube things individually sealed in a plastic strip. I'm not sure what it's made of but it smells pleasant, whatever it is I think there's a little lemongrass oil in the mix. As well as the lure I decided to attach a box to a post to act as a bait hive too. I had a large polystyrene vegetable I'd found outside a supermarket knocking about in the shed and it was time I found a use for the thing. I cut a little hole in it then gave it a coat of water based masonry paint to protect it from sunlight and rain and strapped it to a post. I scribbled Swarm Trap on one side and marked the front with an arrow to the entrance for the benefit of anyone stumbling across it. Not sure if it'll work or not really as it might be a bit bright in there, usually a Bait Hive is an actual empty hive tucked out of the way somewhere or a big wooden box hung up a tree. I wiped some of the swarm attractant on a bit of wood, slung it in the box and wiped some more attractant on the post, the little test tube I also wired to the post. Whilst handling the lure I used disposeable nitrile gloves, you don't want to be walking about with swarm attractant on you.

Use the entrance. Can't you read?.

Two days later there was a large swarm on the post. The tube on it's bit of wire will have been in the centre of the cluster. The post was too firmly fixed to the gound for me to shake the bees off it but it looked simple enough to remove the box hold a Nuc underneath and brush them into it. Simple stuff. Unfortunately the bees had other ideas. I got about half of them into the box and the rest took flight. Popping the box on the ground for the fliers to join their sisters I started inspecting my hives. It would be very easy to see which colony had lost a swarm that size but my colonies were all intact. This swarm must've been drawn by the scent of the lure as they absconded from another apiary. I believe there's at least 6 other apiaries within a mile of this one so it's not too surprising although I'm wondering how strong this lure is and is every swarm in the city going to be heading to my post? Whatever the swarm lure's made from it certainly seems to work anyway. After ascertaining I wasn't missing any bees I found the actual swarm itself was now missing. Instead of the fliers and stragglers joining their sisters in the box those that were in had gone back the others and they'ed flown off. Not too far though. They were in a gooseberry bush. I gave them some time to form a cluster again then carefully made my way to them armed with my Nuc. Removing three of the five frames I held it under the cluster so close the cluster were half way into the box already then shook them into the box replaced the three frames and put the crownboard most of the way on leaving one end open a bit to help the stragglers get in. That should've been it really but instead they took flight again. This time moving into a very tangled collection of bushes.

Thirds resting place, wont be brushing or shaking anything out of there.

There was no way I could shake them out of that mass of twigs and plants. At this point I was thinking whoever had lost these bees was probably glad to see the back of them, and wondering if I really wanted such an awkward colony in my apiary at all. Still I had to get them in the box... Evidently they needed more incentive to stay in it so I swapped one of the new frames of foundation for a grotty looking frame of dark comb I'd earmarked for rendering and replacement. I also threw in the tube of swarm lure. Pushing the Nuc as far into the bush as I could without dislodging the bees I used some tin snips to cut away at the gantry of twigs, stalks, sticks and branches running through the cluster. As I went I removed the little offcuts one at a time placing them on the Nuc floor without dislodging their bee passengers. As the space in the Nuc slowly filled with twigs and leaves I noted bees weren't leaving it yet. Eventually I was able to bend the last couple  of branches into the Nuc and put the lid partway on leaving a space for the foliage and hopefully for bees to enter the box.

Doing as they're told at last.

It'd taken two hours to get to this point but eventually I was able to see workers Nosanoving to tell the other bees this was their home. Lifting one side of the crownbord I was able to pullout the twigs and so on and slip in the remaining frames without them traking flight again. I gave them another half hour to get in then took the box back to my apiary, sat it on top of another hive with the entrance pointing  the other way and soon saw bees Nosanoving at the entrance as flying bees went to join them. I'll leave them alone for a week or two before seeing how they're doing in there.

Stragglers going to join their sisters

Having checked the other hives I could see none are preparing to swarm at the moment, however with a period of  good weather predicted I'm expecting a few more passing swarms to be drawn to my baited post now. I dare say there may even be more from the colony today's awkward swarm had issued from too ..something to look forwards to there.

The Swarm

The other Tuesday I was at work when I got a text from my housemate telling me the bees were swarming. I hadn't expected that but should've known that if they were going to do it it would be on a working day. Hive2 had been very populous so I guessed they were probably the culprits. To be fair they had been making swarm queen cells so they had warned me, however instead of doing an artificial swarm I'd hoped they'ed be happy with a couple of supers adding to give them more space and the swarm cells being squished but that wasn't the case. Next year I'll do an artificial swarm instead and hopefully avoid it.

A real actual photo taken in my back garden.
I'm one of the guys on the left with a flamethrower.

When people think of swarms they probably think of the 1978 killer bee film "The Swarm." The film was a disaster in every sense, a box office flop and an embarrassment to Michael Caine who said it was the worst film he's ever been in. It's basically about a humongous swarm of scary killer bees in america that kill loads of people. Inspired by the africanized honey bee which to be fair is an aggressive little hybrid bugger. The africanized bee was actually developed by a chap wanting to make a bee better suited to tropical conditions. He certainly managed to do what he wanted and they're great as far as honey yield goes, unfortunately they'll also happily chase people up to a mile before stinging them to death. :-s It's actually pretty rare for them to kill people really but the media had a field day with it. Fact is they're used by beekeepers all over the world these days having mixed with bee stocks everywhere warm enough to support them. Fortunately for us in the UK our climate is too cold for them to survive here so unless global warming changes that we don't need to lose sleep over them. So remember folks, no africanized honey bees in the UK and as disaster movies go avoid The Swarm.

People have asked me why bees swarm and in short the answer is to reproduce. Within the colony there's a queen laying eggs so technically the bees are reproducing but that maintains the colonies population, if you think of the colony as a one super organism then to reproduce it needs to make up a whole new colony and that's what the swarm is. They swarm leaves the parent colony find a new home and becomes another independent colony. When a colony throws out a prime swarm what happens is a large proportion of the workforce leave to start a new colony taking the old queen with them whilst the rest stay in the hive where hopefully a new queen they've made will then take over and head up the colony. They also throw out smaller secondary swarms or 'cast swarms' with new queens but typically these are pretty small and can be as little as a half pint of bees.

Back to the bees in my garden then.. right where was I? Well as I said I was at work luckily I was able to take an hour's annual leave and pop home. When I got there my housemate was watching them from an upstairs window and I have to say it was really impressive. Above my garden thousands of bees were milling about darkening the sky in a huge three dimensional cloud. They seemed to have a few false starts tho as they kept going back into the hive then pouring out again -was hard to believe they could actually all fit back into the hive. The sound was also something else. We all know the sound a bee makes but throw up about 20,000 including a contingent of drones and you've got quite a formidable noise.

Unfortunately the individual bees being small I couldn't get a decent photograph of them in flight but here's an image my housemate took from the bathroom window.

There's a buzz in the air

Doesn't really get across quite how impressive it was but you can see a few black dots.. Whilst bees are swarming they can look pretty intimidating but contrary to popular belief they're not really aggressive. Whilst I wouldn't suggest you run into the middle and start shouting and waving your arms about they're actually preoccupied with finding a new home to live in and not attacking people. After all the swarm has no actual home to defend, they're gorged on honey and it's not like they eat people anyway is it?

I quickly hatched a clever plan to catch the bees and put out three boxes with used honeycomb and food stores and a drop of lemongrass essential oil (it attracts bees dontchaknow) in them so that when they did settle and choose a place to live they'ed choose one of those boxes and I'd still have my bees :) I then went back to work and when I got home in the evening I could see bees coming and going from the box entrances. Having outwitted a creature with a brain the size of a sesame seed I felt rather smug.

Unfortunately I was completely wrong and when I checked the next  day I found that the bees in my baited boxes were just robbing them for their colonies back in the hives, the swarm itself has vanished. Going by the capacity of the Hive2 and how full it was before and after the swarm I reckon it was about 20,000 bees that went along with the old queen. Hopefully when they settled someplace some other beekeeper got a call and now has my bees in a new hive making lots of honey. All isn't lost for me tho, I still have bees in my hives just one of the colonies is slightly smaller now.