In this instructional video, Laurence Edwards of Black Mountain Honey explains step‑by‑step how to prepare a new or used beehive so it becomes an effective bait hive for catching swarms in spring. He begins by emphasizing that used hives or old black comb are naturally more attractive, but if those aren’t available he recommends artificial attractants such as lemongrass oil, beeswax, or propolis to impart the scent of a lived‑in hive. He then details the optimal hive configuration: a single brood box plus one super (30‑50 L volume), preferably without foundation frames, or with foundation‑less frames treated with starter strips or wax. Elevating the hive about one metre, orienting it south or southeast in dappled sunlight, and ensuring a solid floor (by inserting an inspection board or a solid board with a single central hole) are highlighted as critical placement factors. Finally, he advises reducing the entrance to roughly the size of a 50p coin to control access. Throughout, Edwards stresses that neglecting any of these points—especially the floor and entrance—greatly reduces the chance of catching a swarm. The video ends with a call for community tips and a reminder to subscribe.
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In this video, I'm gonna show you how to set up your new or used beehives to attract swarms. Hi, I'm Laurence Edmonds from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. In this video, I'm gonna show you how to set up a wooden beehive or a poly beehive and get it set up right so you can attract swarms in your garden, in your apiary, or anywhere at all. Now, the reason I'm doing this video is I've seen a number of people do this on Facebook last year, which is go and buy a new beehive, Set it up as per the manufacturer instructions, put it in their garden, and wait for the bees to come. I'd say 99 times out of 100, that's not going to work. What I'm going to cover in this video though is all of the points to make your beehive, whether it's used or new, as attractive to bees as it possibly can be. So first thing to say is a used beehive is so much more attractive to bees. I catch bees in used beehives all the time without even setting them up as bait hives. Bees love the smell of bees. They love the smell of old black comb. I've done a number of videos showing how to set bait hives up using old comb, but in this video I'm going to focus more on how to set up a new beehive to give yourself the very best chance. So with that out of the way, if you can beg or borrow or plead with anybody to get yourself a nice piece of black comb from a disease-free colony— needs to be a disease-free colony, please don't use old black comb that you found around— get it from someone reputable, get it from a friend, and then that will attract bees to your hive. That really is the best way of doing it. But in terms of setting up a new beehive, there's a few tricks that you can follow in terms of an artificial way of attracting them and a few ways that you can actually set the configuration of that beehive up to make it attractive to bees. So the first thing to say is if you're not gonna be able to use any blackcomb, the best practice really is to use some form of attractant. Now that can be an artificial attractant like a lemongrass oil, But I find even better than that is just to use some beeswax. Buy yourself some beeswax, hopefully some UK-made beeswax, and just go over all of the faces on your hive and rub that beeswax in. That really will help attract the bees to it. It gives it the smell of a beehive, definitely makes it more attractive to bees. Even better than that, if you can get hold of some propolis as well, paint the inside with a little bit of propolis. It just adds to that feeling, that smell to the bees that this is a used beehive. It's not just a wooden box, it's somewhere where bees have lived, or it's somewhere where they've got the smell, the familiar smell of a beehive in beeswax and propolis. Next thing to talk about is how many boxes to set up, because I've seen this so many times where you go out, you buy a kit, comes with 2 supers and a brood box, frames of foundation. You put everything together, supers as well, you put the queen excluder in and hope that the bees will come along. Really don't stand much of a chance with a new beehive with the frames in it as well. So I think the best bet, and you can do this one of two ways, is to use only the brood box or the brood box and a super, single super. And I don't think you should put any frames in there at all with foundation in, but if you're going to put your frames in, you want to put them in with starter strips, or at least paint a little bit of wax on the top bars of the frames. And then that means if the swarm arrives when you're not there, Gives them a little bit of a chance to start drawing that wax down. But what you're doing there is you're simulating a space, a void. And Tom Seeley reckons 40 litres is the optimum. And I'd say anywhere between kind of 30 to 50 litres is going to catch you a really nice swarm. You don't want it too small though. So my advice, if you're going to do it and you're going to set this up at home, go with a single brood box, a single super, and no frames in there whatsoever. And if you're going to put frames in there, put foundationless frames in there with either starter strips at the top or paint some wax along that top bar just to give them a little bit of a head start. So next thing to talk about is height. Now, if you put your beehive on the ground, you can definitely catch swarms. The height really isn't too much of an issue, but I find getting it up off the ground, even somewhere just as high as this where it's, say, a meter off the ground, makes a massive, massive difference. So don't think you're setting it up on the stand that you've got and then that's good enough. You might catch bees there, but I definitely find elevating it a little bit really does help catch the swarms, brings it into their eyeline, I guess, a little bit more. And I think they can Bend it a bit more when it's a little bit off the ground. Next one to say is orientation of the hive. Try and face it south as best as you possibly can and try and keep it in, say, dappled sunlight. I find they don't work too well if they're completely in shade, and also they don't work too well if they're in complete sunlight as well. So if you can get somewhere that kind of gets like a little bit of dappled sunlight, preferably in the warmest part of the day, that's going to be the ideal spot. Face it south, southeast as well. Bees tend to like it when they face in that direction. And now the most important bit, I think, of this video. This is the one that if you followed all of the rest of the advice there and you didn't do this last bit, you really would struggle to catch them. And I've had conversations with people on Facebook and YouTube about this before, and as always with beekeeping, people have differences of opinion. I can safely say though, I have never ever caught a swarm ever where I've left the open mesh floor open. Never ever happened. And I think it's because the bees, they don't They obviously can't go through it, but they see it as a bit of a threat to where they want to live. So I've never once had a colony stay where there's been an open mesh floor underneath them. So if the beehive that you've got is on an open mesh floor, you need to block that up some way. There's a really easy trick, and that's what I'm going to show you with this beehive here. So I'm doing a separate video with this one at the moment, which is talking about old frames and a comparison with Langstroth. So I'm getting my money's worth for this old beehive that I've got here. Now, if you haven't seen old frames as well, this is what the old frames look like. We've used these as supers, but as you can see, they've got a little bit of old brood comb in there as well. That is the best possible thing you can get to attract bees to your beehive. If you can get it like this, couple of frames like this in there, that really will get the bees going. But the eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed a little bit of an omission here. So we've got the roof here and we've got the brood box, and normally you would have a crown board. And 9 times out of 10, when you buy the kits, they do come with a crown board as well. So normally your crown board would sit on the top like that. And then you'd have this open mesh floor on the bottom. I'm going to talk to you about 2 things to do with this open mesh floor, and they're really good tips to give you the best chance of catching a swarm. So the first one is we somehow need to block that open mesh floor up. And generally when you buy a beehive, you get an inspection board that goes into the bottom. All I would say is put that inspection board in the bottom. That should close it up sufficiently to give the bees the impression that there's a genuine floor, there's something to protect them from things coming up from underneath. So keep that inspection board in if you're using your beehive as a bait hive. If you don't have an inspection board, you can just put this completely on something solid. That should give you the impression that it's solid as well. Or you can use this crown board so you can pick up the whole hive, pick up the floor, and put it on the crown board like that. So you have a solid crown board underneath. I don't think that really works too well because you still have this void there and the bees can see through it. So my little tip and trick for catching the swarms in a beehive like this, in terms of the crown board, is place it directly on top of the beehive like that. Cover up one of the holes and just leave a central hole in the middle. So you've effectively got a solid board with a hole at the bottom, and then you can just take your box and put that straight on top like that, and then the roof can go back on as well. So what you've created there for the bees is a solid roof, a solid floor with a single hole in it, And then all of your frames in the middle. And like I said, if you're going to do it with the frames, if you've got 10 old frames, you can just leave them in there. The bees will really appreciate that. I find if you've not got old frames though and you're going to do it with foundationless frames, better to leave a void in there and give the bees a chance to actually see it as a space to go and cluster, as opposed to filling it with frames like that. But you've created a real solid top and a real solid bottom with a hole in the middle. That is the setup that I would use to try and turn my beehive. into a bait hive. Solid floor, solid top. And then there's one last thing that I would do as well. I would reduce that front entrance, even though it's a bit of a pseudo entrance, if you will, because it's not really the main entrance to the hive. I'd reduce that down to the size of, say, a 50p coin. You can do that with an entrance block. All I would do is I'd probably just cut a piece of wood and then leave it roughly a 50p piece size to let the bees in and out. If you follow all of those tips, That's going to be the best possible way of catching bees in a new beehive. So I hope you found that video useful. Best of luck in catching swarms this year. Bait hives are so, so much fun. I absolutely love setting up bait hives. If you've got any tips, you've got any tricks, any different ways of doing it, stick it in the comments below. I love to learn different ways of doing things, so always keen to learn from the whole YouTube community. But thanks for watching. As always, please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time. Bye.
