How do you "bait" your swarm traps?

As with anything bee-related, geographic region plays into swarm trapping as well. There has to be bees around for a swarm trap to work. Looking around at what's online, one gets the sense that some areas are both warm enough and saturated enough with bee populations, that you could pretty much line a few shoe boxes up on your doorstep with a drop of lemongrass oil in each and get swarms.

The number of colonies in the area have to affect the success rate of your trap, and my home area is not very well-saturated with honeybee colonies.

So I guess the details are more important in some areas than in others.

One thing that people talk a lot about is box size. Tom Seeley's work is often quoted, suggesting a 40L cavity size, but I think his work was centered in New York and Maine. I wonder if region affects the cavity size bees search out. I wonder if bees in harder wintering areas require larger cavities to store in, and will favor those. Haven't been able to find that out.

I'm working with a bunch of old, 8-frame deep boxes at the moment. I have a bunch of dried out slumgum from the remains of a wax melt, and have had it sealed in plastic with several drops of lemon oil in it. I thought I'd drop a handful of that stuff in each hive with some comb. Then I'm going to take them into the Annapolis Valley during the Spring. The valley is a major fruit-growing area and there's a much higher concentration of bees down that way.

Haven't yet figured where exactly to put them...

Adam

I wouldn't worry to much about what to use and where to use it. All good advice given but bees will come. Even sometimes when your not
looking for them. This was taken in L.A. by the Backwards Beekeeping Club.

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Wow! An upright wax melter!

beyondthesidewalks said:

Sometimes good enough is perfect.

Click to expand...

Well said and to prove your point, here's another one in a buried power meter box. We have an epidemic of illiterate bees.

Seeley's experiments show what bees find optimum -- when they have options where all else is equal. When they are given options of a box the size of a 5 frame nuc, and a box the size of a ten frame deep which are both dry, have an acceptable entrance, etc then they'll choose the bigger box. Seeley's work doesn't say they won't choose a space 15L in size - it does say that they'd rather have one 40L if they can find it.

Just because people catch swarms in 5 frame nucs or mailboxes doesn't mean that bees like those the best - but it does prove that they will happily move into those spaces when they can't find a better solution fast enough. And it is also likely that the 5 frame nuc with comb and/or lemongrass oil fulfills enough of their requirements in other regards. As you say, "good enough is perfect" - and as options out in the regular world go, a five frame nuc box, with a nice entrance size, dry interior, drawn comb etc probably looks pretty perfect most of the time.

It comes down to odds in many ways. When you create a swarm trap, you're stacking the odds in favor of the bees finding and choosing your box. Seeley's work simply helps us by giving us a selection of ways to stack the deck. If 5 frame boxes work in your area, it's crazy not to use them. They're smaller, less material, easier to handle...

But Seeley's work does suggest that if Odfrank has his 5 frame nuc box out on his picnic table, and his neighbor has a 10 frame out on his picnic table, the bees will choose the neighbors box.

But how often do they have both to choose from?


Adam

Charlie would make a lot more honey if he used the right size valve box.