Hello and welcome to The BeeVlog
Today I'm putting the finishing touches on my swarm trap so I can finally get them out there to catch some swarms.
I built these swarm traps out of 2 medium height, 5-frame nuc boxes
I'll provide a link down in the shownotes on how I built these boxes.
One thing I'm trying differently on some of my traps is I am painting the insides with a propolis mix.
Which is just alcohol and propolis.
And I'm doing this on 4 out of 8 of the swarm traps to see how well it works.
Let's do a flashback to show how I went ahead and painted the inside of these boxes with propolis.
Yes I remember it like it was yesterday.
I'm going to try a little experiment here. I have some propolis from scrapings on other boxes
and some grain alcohol.
I'm going to use the grain alcohol to dissolve the propolis and make a wash
that I can paint the inside of one of my swarm traps with.
I've never done this before.
I don't know how to do it or what I'm doing, I'm just going to play it by ear and see how well it goes.
Now this is not pure propolis, there are some bits of wax and little bits of dead bees in here.
So we'll see how this goes.
So I tried stirring and stirring and stirring and eventually got most of everything kind of crushed down in there.
But it's not dissolved as well as I would like it to. I think it's because of all the wax.
So I'm going to let it sit and just see if the alcohol can kind of
soak up and dissolve some more of the propolis.
Well I've let this sit for about half an hour and there's still a lot of chunks in here.
I don't think that I'm going to get much more to dissolve.
I think this is just all a bunch of wax or other bits of "not propolis."
Well that worked really well and was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be.
After it dries it takes on a rough texture and has a nice smell.
It smells like a used beehive instead of brand new wood.
So I think that that's going to work really nicely and I really like it.
So now that the insides are painted I went ahead and assembled them.
Let's go through the steps of how I assembled the boxes.
So here's the stack of the swarm trap.
The bottom board is just a simple solid bottom board
that I painted on the bottom but left the inside bare.
The bottom box will go on and I secure these pieces together with hive staples.
These were the cheapest and simplest solution I could find
to attach everything together.
They just staple along between boxes and between the bottom boards.
The inside of the box is going to be outfitted with foundationless frames.
They have a wedge that acts as a comb guide.
Each of the boxes will get a couple wedges to hold the frames in place.
So they don't move around during transport and hanging.
The top box is also outfitted with foundationless frames
but also one single frame that has some drawn out brood comb.
The lid is just a simple migratory-style cover.
And this will be screwed down from the top instead of using hive staples.
And that is my swarm trap.
These wedges measure 2-1/2 inches tall
by 3/4 inches wide at the top
and a 1/4 inch wide at the bottom.
With a small notch cut about a 1/4 from the top.
Now this notch would have to be fit to your frames and your box,
so some of these dimensions may differ depending on your setup.
I drilled an 1-1/4 inch diameter hole in the bottom box
I offset it so that it's centered between 2 frames.
You can see the gap there between the frames.
And that's so the bees have easier access in and out.
The queen can fit. The drones can fit.
And there isn't any concern about it being too tight.
I'm going to install one of these plastic gates.
I don't know how well this will hold up out in the sun
or how well it will work.
I'm concerned about it warping
but it's just going to get attached with a single screw there,
and then it can rotate into a closed position when I need to gather the trap.
Otherwise it will just stay open, like that.
The key to using hive staples is to toe them in on opposite sides
so that the boxes don't want to shift on you.
You can see that on the other side I also have them toed the opposite direction.
Before securing the lid I'm going to bait the box with a couple drops of lemongrass oil
placed on the underside of the lid.
Then the last thing I do is I'm going to be installing
a hanging board with a hole at the top.
It can be used to hang it wherever I'm going to be hanging it up.
With the swarm trap all assembled it's time to get it installed out in my backyard.
This may not actually be necessary because the frames get in the way
but I'm going to install a small nail here to prevent birds from moving in.
There we go.