It worked! My swarm trap caught a swarm.
Hello everyone, and welcome to The Bee Vlog.
I put up 6 of these swarm traps throughout my neighborhood and one of them finally caught a swarm.
I hung this one up on April 30th in a neighborhood where I got a swarm call
but the swarm was up in a tree in a spot that I just couldn't get to.
So I hung this up next door in a very tall fir tree
hoping that the swarm would just move in and I wouldn't have to do anything.
But the swarm took off the next day and didn't move in
so I left the trap there hoping that another swarm would move in.
And then 3 days ago I got a call from the neighbor and sure enough, it had caught a swarm.
So last night after sunset I went and closed off the entrance.
Then carefully removed the trap from the tree.
Now the key here is not to drop it.
Then I moved them to a new location about 2 miles away from where they had been caught.
I went back today to see if any stray bees had made it back to the old site
and I saw 2 bees circling the tree and looking for their old home, and that's it.
So it looks like about 2 miles did the trick.
One thing I find very fascinating is this build-up of wax on the outside here.
To me, this looks like a swarm had clustered on here for several hours
even probably a good part of a day.
When this swarm moved in I don't know if they had a small secondary swarm that was with them
clustering to the outside until they found a new place.
Or if it just took them a while to decide that they actually wanted to move in and some of them hung out on the outside here.
But this wax here is from the bees, during the swarm, their wax glands are primed and ready to go and creating a lot of wax
and they have to put it somewhere so they just attach it to whatever they're clustering to.
Even though there were a couple bees that got lost and returned to the old location
it looks like most of the bees here are not confused and know where they are and what's going on.
I see a lot of them bringing in grey pollen.
That is from our blackberries here, the himalayan blackberry that's in full bloom and providing a lot of nectar and pollen.
I do plan to move them out of this box sometime soon, maybe in the next 2 to 3 weeks.
There's really no rush right now.
They have 5 frames on the bottom and 5 frames on the top here that they can build comb on.
The one thing I am concerned about is that as we go into July where we start to hit our high temperatures is ventilation.
So if I don't get a chance to move them out of this box what I'll do is actually put a little shim
underneath the lid here to give them a little bit of ventilation.
Otherwise they're still building up and they don't need the extra space yet so they're okay where they're at
in this box until I have the chance to move them out.
This is very exciting to me because the plan came together.
This is really the easiest way to catch swarms.
You don't have to chase down swarms, you don't have to have any special equipment
you just have to build some boxes, bait them, hang them up, and see what happens.
It's a little like fishing where you just throw in a hook and see if you get a bite.
Sometimes you get a hit and sometimes you don't.
But that's all part of the game and it's all part of the fun.