You have to paint the paper mache flower pot type swarm traps, to seal them, or they will soak up water. Remarkably, they do hold up to the weather pretty good, as long as you don't mess with them while they are wet. About the cheapest you can get them for is about $12 plus shipping. You can make some bait hives out of 1/2" plywood, that will hold standard frames, and it is a lot easier and cheaper, in the long run. As soon as the bees take up residence in the trap, they start building comb, and in just a couple of days, you have a mess to transfer, where if you build a bait hive that holds frames, all you have to do is transfer the frames into a hive body. I built mine the size of a 8 frame hive body, to meet the 40 liter recommendation from the USDA and Cornell University. Most of the people here use 5 frame nucs, with success. You can build 3 - 8 frame bait hives out of one sheet of 1/2" plywood. Home Depot sells the 1/2" plywood for $14.95, so they cost you about $5 a piece, plus frames and foundation which you will need anyway. Look at the other swarm trap posts here. Hambone posted pictures of my bait hives. I can't get the image or link to post on this forum, so he did it for me.