Stop Guessing: The Bait Trap Setup That Gets Swarms

In this video, I'm gonna give you my top tips for setting up bait hives. Now, this might look like a normal beehive, but there is nothing in it at the moment. And I have set it up within my apiary with one intention, and that is to try and catch some of my swarms that might leave my apiary. Now, I might inadvertently catch somebody else's swarms as well. It's quite obvious for me when I do that around here. I have big orange swarms of bees leaving, and they're big, strong, massive swarms. And then sometimes you get smaller, darker feral swarms as well. So really easy to distinguish between the two. And take the relevant action, which is to quarantine anything that's coming in. And then if they're my own bees and I see them swarm, or I know it's my marked queen, then the risk is much less. But the first tip that I'll give you when it comes to putting up bait hives like this is do not do what I did years ago and think that it is a clever idea to put old dark comb into these bait traps to attract swarms in. It works very, very well. The bees will come in, and it is a huge disease risk. 'Cause what you're essentially doing is taking old dark manky comb, with remnants of honey, with remnants of disease, potential spreading of EFB, and just putting it up for all of the local bee population to come and have a look at, come and have a taste, spread some disease. And okay, you might catch a swarm, but you're introducing a huge amount of risk, and I do not recommend for anybody to do that. But once you take away the ability to add in that dark comb, how can you make these hives as attractive as they can possibly be to the bees without introducing new risk in there as well? So once you've removed the frames and you've got these boxes here, if the boxes are covered in propolis and wax and old bee gunk, then you're introducing that exact same risk again. So these boxes here, they have been scraped clean, they've been scorched, and bees really do like a nice dark black scorched surface. That's why you see them very often finding nice cavities where a tree has been struck by lightning, and then the bees go inside and make a nice home in there. I wouldn't say it's a deal breaker. I do it to make sure that the boxes are sterile, but swarms definitely like to move into charred boxes like this. Another really key crucial point is the volume of the box that you've got here and the configuration of the box a little bit as well. So studies have shown around 35 to 45 liters is the optimum cavity volume, but it's also shown that this nice neat upright configuration is much better than if I just tip that over on its side. Bees like to go up in this chimney style, so if you can have a box over a box like this, which is a double Langstroth 6-frame box setup, so essentially a 12-frame volume box but really nice and tall like this, that's going to be pretty much perfect. Now another thing that people talk about is the orientation and the height off the ground, and when I looked at this previously and when I did tests, I found that the ones, as long as they're a little bit off the ground like this, they tend to do just as well as the ones that are really high up in the trees and on the roof. So I just do what's easier and get them up off the ground, but But I do find facing them east, southeast, somewhere where they're gonna get some of that nice early sun, but then maybe in the shade for the majority of the day after that, that is gonna entice the bees in. You've gotta remember what happens here. All of the scout bees from these swarms are gonna go out and look to see where they can go and move the colony. They're gonna find this hive and they're gonna assess it. They're gonna say, well, where's the entrance? Is the entrance in the right place? Is the entrance the right size? And I like to put my entrances down low like this and have them about a 1p piece, no bigger than that. Some people say even a 50p piece, but I like to keep them a little bit smaller, and I find the bees can defend them a bit better that way. Now, if you just tick all of those boxes and make sure that it is the best possible place for that swarm, then you're going to catch tons and tons of swarms every single year. There are a few things though that will really put bees off going into your hive, so definitely do not make any of these mistakes. The number one mistake that I see people making is setting up bait traps with open mesh floors on the bottom. The bees basically don't even know that they're there. They go there and just see this big hole at the bottom and say, no, that's not easily defendable, so we're not going to have that, thank you very much. So if you look at this bait hive here and you poke in there, Zane, if you get in, I've got solid floors on all of the bottom of these here, and that means it's going to be really easily defendable for any bees that make this their home. So another really important point, and one that's often overlooked, is keeping the whole hive weather tight. It needs to be dry and warm inside, or at least completely sheltered from the rain and the elements. If you've got You've got a leaky roof and water's going down inside, it just makes it really unattractive to those scout bees. So what I like to do is put a big rock on top, make sure it's completely aligned like that, and just ensure that no rain can get inside. You want to keep it nice and warm and dry in there. Another mistake I see a lot of people making, and again, all of these mistakes I made them back in the past as well, but it's putting the swarm traps out way too late. They get to kind of middle of May, back end of May, and they say, well, the bees are swarming now, so I'm going to put my bait traps out. You've missed it by a good few weeks. It is the 20th of April today, and my bait traps are going out, and they're not getting any attention at the moment because I know the swarm pressure is about two or three weeks away at the moment. But having these out early is going to give me the very best chance of attracting the early swarms, the big prime swarms. They're the ones that you want to really capture, and getting them out early makes all the difference. What I like to do with my swarm traps, though, is put out loads. So I've got this one here, but I've probably got another. 9 or 10 dotted around the apiary just to give the bees all of those different options. If they don't like this one, they might like the one over there. And I just try and eliminate any really awkward places that the bees can go and swarm. If you've got a really awkward tree where you know the bees hang off the same branch every year, go up and trim it and try and give them no other choice than to go into your bait hives. Finally, once you've got all of your bait hives into position, trust me, if a swarm lands inside, you will know. You will see the activity at the entrance. If you see the swarm going in, But once you've actually got a colony of bees inside the box, the real giveaway is seeing bees coming in with pollen. Then you definitely know that you've got a colony inside here. But my advice to you is not to go in and check all the time. You see a couple of bees buzzing around and say, okay, well, let's have a quick look inside. Oh no, they're not there. And then you're touching it and you're messing up with it and you're breaking seals and you're much better off just leaving them there. What will be will be. If you catch something, believe me, you will know. So then finally, what do I actually put inside the bait hive, 'cause I don't put old combs in there. And in fact, in a lot of the bait boxes I've got, I just leave them completely empty. It is just a void, and I know that I'll have to fix a bit of a mess if I leave the swarm in there for too long. But then a lot of them, on the top box, I will just put 5 or 6 frames of foundation like this, and that gives the bees some nice beeswax smell to work on. And even though that's not gonna be anywhere near as attractive to the bees or a swarm as nice dark old brood comb, it does mean that if you do get a swarm landing here, It makes it so much easier because they're just going to draw out all of that foundation for you. Swarms are brilliant at drawing out foundation. So it's definitely wise, I would say, to stick at least 1 or 2 frames in there just to get the bees going, get that beeswax smell in there as well. And what some people even say is coating the inside with really high temperature wax, wax that's going to be sterile when you put it on, that improves the chances of getting bees to go in. I quite enjoy putting out the bait traps and seeing what we get at the end of the year. And if I get any, I'll definitely do a video and show you