Thursday, March 19, 2009

First baited swarm of the season


No sooner as I posted about not getting any swarms yet, I find one in one of my bait hives. I only put this one out last Sunday. I wasn't even going to check them this afternoon but my dog wanted a ride out! Long story! This hive was a bit of an experiment. There was much discussion on the warre group about hexagonal hives being the optimum shape for a bee nest. I decided to use some old pallet wood and give one a go. I found it very fiddly and time consuming so I turned it into a small bait hive. Now some people reckon that a bait hive should be about 40 litres volume. I have only ever baited swarms in smaller volume hives so I make mine about 25 litres which this is. I doubt very much that this is feral as I have been told there are a lot of hives about 200m away. This hive has angle cut top bars with pieces of comb bonded to them with beeswax. I also used a swarm lure with QMP (Queen Mandibular Pheromone) and some attractant gel smeared on the outside. I will leave them where they are for about a month and see if they stay put, then I will transfer them to a Top Bar Hive at my home apiary. I will use some of my standard 43cm x 35mm top bars and screw through into these thinner bars. Then just lift them out and into the TBH. I am hoping these bees will turn out to be the gentle stock I need to introduce into my apiary.

1 comment:

  1. Hi there

    Never came across a bait hive. Please can you tell me something about it? Thanks

    ReplyDelete