Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Catching a swarm of bees

Had a trap on the deck for a week or so. Bees were checking it out more and more over the past couple of days. They finally made their move this morning. Pardon the poor video skills.

Nicely done. Last swarm I trapped I had to cut a limb and drop it into the truck bed and then move to a box.

Sorry of this is a dumb question but I’ve never heard of trapping bee swarms. Are these wild bees? Is this so you can move them to a hive for honey production?

Real nice vids!

Here's one I grabbed at the nearby rose garden a few days ago.


And a queen that I squished (poor laying pattern as you can see) before I combined a different hive with another.
pichosting

It's just a hive body (in this case a small nuc hive) with some attractant on and in it. Maybe wild. Who knows.

I'll move them into a bigger standard box tomorrow and yes I can use them for honey production. But not this year. They'll have to build up then be ready next year.

Swarms from mine end up 100ft up in firs.

Had them swarm on my porch light one year....
It's quite something to see...

What are some reasons that the bees swarm?

Sweet! 😁


That's a real blessing. You were given enough bees to fill all of those hives and didn't even have to carry them through the woods!

Let's see if I understand.
You used the queen, pheremones, to lure the drones to the hives/traps. She just had to sit on top, and they start going in to set up shop?

That's how they reproduce. A hive will split kinda like a single-cell organism. The hive will start to raise queens. Right around when the queen cells are capped they'll swarm. The old queen goes with the swarm and the old hive gets a new queen. Sometimes a hive will cast off follow-up swarms with virgin queens from extra cells. However most times the first queen out goes around and kills all the rest of the unhatched queens in the cells. Hives can swarm a couple of times in a season. We beekeepers try to prevent swarms by splitting hives and various other techniques.

They'll also sometime decide they don't like where they are living (pests, disease, etc.) and the whole hive will abscond.

Very cool, thanks for posting that !!

Errr... not quite. I saw the queen as she was on the beard and caught her in the clip. I wanted her in the clip in case I saw another queen. Multiple queens in a swarm are not uncommon. But only one would have probably survived. If I saw another I would have split the swarm and put the one I caught in the clip in one and the other in another. Didn't see another queen so I opened the clip and watched her walk in.

That's cool .
I've always enjoyed studying animal and insect behavior. Honey bees have such an ancient written history.

Long ago, I invited a bee keeper like your self to share my wildlife education class .
I was teaching a miniseries on local wasps/bees.
She brought her hive in our display box of plexiglass and taught on that .
We could all safely study the hive without harm.
A yellow jacket was in there being escorted by two workers one on either side looking for an exit. Funny
😄 to see that up close.


I took a class from the leading entomologist specializing in honey bee mite eradication.
He developed the first commonly used natural treatment. Very smart man. He'd ask me to bring my collections for his grad students to see and we had some good times sharing info. Never have bought the equipment and raised any, but have supported local keepers. It's a necessity.....what do they call it now??
An essential business.
That's certainly true. A lot of orchards and farms rent hives for pollination. Otherwise, there wouldn't be much we could afford in the produce section.

Great Job!

I have caught five swarms this year.
Four of which were in traps made of large pressed paper type flower pots. I have not had luck using small boxes with frames in them. I have had bees checking them out for a day or two, but they did not stay. Since photo bucket went bad, I have not figured out how to post pictures. miles

I think you just provided an answer to something that occurred a few weeks ago.

I was outside in front of my house and heard a low droning sound. Couldn’t quite wrap my mind around what it was but it was getting louder. That’s when I spotted what looked like a million bees all swarming around about roof high in front of my neighbor’s house. I beat feet back into my own house, watched them through the window and noticed they were actually flying from my next door neighbor’s towards the neighbors house across the street. They flew right over her house and continued on. It was a huge swarm and the first thing I thought was “African Bees”!

Now I’m thinking probably just some hive that split somewhere? Only other time I’ve seen that was out in the middle of nowhere in the desert. A swarm flew right over our heads but never bothered us. That one wasn’t as large as this one though.

Miles, I've got traps specially made, with full frames for catching swarms. They work great. However, the trick is to make the box height about a frame and a half. That extra space below the frames put the trap entry there. The space is a game changer and will trigger a scout to bring the gang over. They will then go to the top of the cavity (as you know) and will build on your frames. Let them brood up then transfer frames to your yard. Easy peasy. Been doing this for many years. Space at bottom is key.

Thanks.

She was pretty dark. Would be hard for me to spot her.

Probably the reason, as I just built a 5 frame box with the bottom the same as a regular hive. I will make one as you suggested. Problem with the flower pot one is that you have to rubber band wax and brood into a frame. Works but not pretty or easy. miles

That's how this trap is constructed. It's a 4 frame deep nuc that I added a medium on top of. The frames (I think there are two in there) are hanging from the top.