The Cheapest Way To Catch Bees and Start Beekeeping for Free

Do you want to catch a swarm of bees and only pay pennies for it? In this video, I'm going to show you how. Hi, I'm Laurence Edmonds from Black Mancin' Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. In this video, I'm going to show you the lowest cost version, how to make a bait hive, and how to attract bees to it. So I'm a strong believer that beekeeping should be for everybody. You don't need to go and buy a nuc. You can go and catch swarms for free. It's quite controversial, the video I did before about selling swarms, but I want to show you how to catch the swarms for free. You don't need to go and make plywood bait hives. You don't need to go and buy nucs for bait hives. You can do it and it will literally cost you pennies. So maybe I've given it a little bit away. This is a polystyrene box. Looks quite a lot like a nuc box, doesn't it? You can get these from butchers and you can get them from fishmongers. You can get them from a lot of other places as well, and they are feather light. These aren't like kind of deep, heavy, compressed, high-density nucleus boxes. These are designed just to keep things cool in transit. Butchers, fishmongers—they will be so happy for you to come along and take these off their hands because they've got to dispose of them. They've been used once. They bring the fish in. They bring the meat in in them, and then they got to go and take them to the tip. So you're doing something good for the environment as well. You're recycling something that would go to waste. Now you can go. Town on one of these. You could paint it, you could coat it, you can do all sorts of things to it. But what I'm showing you today is the cheapest, simplest method to try and catch bees in one of these. But I want to keep the cost to an absolute minimum. So with that said, I'm not going to do much. I'll give you a couple of little diamond-encrusted options to put onto this that might cost a little bit more, but I'm going to show you that really simple method, keep that cost down as much as possible. So first off, let's have a look inside this box. Like I said, it's absolutely featherweight. It's really, really fragile. Don't go thinking you can turn one of these into a nuc. Believe me, I have had a think about that. You can't do it. But it's a really, really good size. If you look at the research that Sealy did on swarms, he said you want a 40-liter box. Doesn't matter what the box is, a 40-liter box is good. This one here I've got is 34 liters, so it's there or thereabouts. They come in loads of different sizes, these, so just speak to your fishmonger, speak to your butcher, See which ones they get. They are so, so cheap. But it's a 34-liter box. It's got 2 really good things going for it. One, it's got a roof that you can take off. Makes things so much easier. But it's a waterproof roof. Means that inside it's going to be really, really nice and warm. The next thing, it's got a solid bottom. Swarms hate it when they've got a mesh underneath. There is no chance you're going to get a swarm landing when you've got a mesh underneath the box like that. So solid top, solid bottom. And then the final thing that's really good is that it's insulated. Bees definitely like a nice insulated box. They're gonna go in there, they're gonna assess what's inside it, and hopefully for you, they're gonna try and make it their home. Now, if you just wanna strap this up to a tree or went and put it somewhere, then you're probably not gonna have much luck. You need to create an opening somewhere. So all I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna put an opening at the front. Doesn't need to be neat. You're looking to make it about the size of a 50p piece. If you're outside the UK and you don't know what a 50p piece is, you're looking at about an inch round. Right, so there you go. Did that off camera. Took me 10 seconds. Just got it about the size of a finger, maybe a little bit smaller than that, but it means the bees can get in, the bees can get out. Now, if you wanted to go for the absolute minimum cost version, just leave the hole like that. I've got an entrance disc over there and it cost me about 40p. I'm going to put the entrance disc on there because it is good if you catch a swarm. Means you can just close it up and transport it to somewhere else where it's easier to work. Right, so there we go. I've got a little entrance disc on that now. It means I can open and close it. The total cost so far is 40 pence. Now, if you were gonna go and put that in a position, and we'll talk about positioning in a little while, you might catch bees in that just as it is. Just the fact that it's got a solid top, a solid bottom, a little entrance, gonna face south or southeast, and it's gonna be about a meter off the ground. You might catch bees in that. You really do stand a good chance of catching some bees like that. What I'm going to talk to you about now is some low-cost options just to make that a little bit more attractive to the bees. So I've spoken about this in previous videos. Anything you can do to make this box more attractive to the bees is going to increase your chances. If you can get any beeswax, rub the inside with beeswax. Don't pour melted beeswax on this one because it will just melt straight through it. Propolis would work well though. If you can get hold of some beekeeper's propolis, liquefy it down with some alcohol, paint that on the inside. Test it first though to make sure it doesn't melt. Both of those things are going to make it so much more attractive. But again, you've got to go out, buy the beeswax, you've got to go and buy the propolis, so it does come at a little bit of a cost. The method that I've got here though comes in this little tiny vial here. So this is a swarm lure I bought off eBay, cost me a pound. £1 for some swarm lure. And all it is is it's a mix of predominantly lemongrass oil and some other fancy oils as well. I don't really buy into it too much, but you could do this just with lemongrass oil. But I really like the container that it comes in, makes this a really nice easy hack. So you look at that oil there, it's just a little vial of mainly lemongrass oil, probably watered down with some other oils as well, some base oils. But you smell it, it's definitely lemongrass oil. That's what attracts the bees. 'Cause it mimics a queen's pheromone. So you can make this yourself, but I like the little vial that it comes in. I'll tell you why I like the vial, 'cause what you're going to do with this is you're not going to spray it over the inside of the nuc. Believe me, that will melt through every part where you get oil on it. It melts through 160 grams per liter density, and this one here is about 20 grams per liter density. It will melt through it in seconds. But what I really like with this one, 'cause you've got the shape of it and you've got the soft poly, You can just stick it into it and leave it there. And because it's so pungent, just by being there, that's going to give you the attractant that you need, and you can pretty much set it and leave it alone. So hopefully you can see that at the bottom of the box there, it's just pinned in. Okay, a little bit of poly fell out there, but my attractant is still fixed at the bottom of the box. That's really good for catching swarms because it means you can just set it and leave it. You can put wooden frames in here, you can put a dab of lemongrass oil on. You'd have to keep on coming back though and doing it again and again and again. That is the method complete. It's a free box, a 50p entrance reducer that you really don't need, and then a £1 swarm lure at the bottom of the box like that. I'm going to put this one up. I reckon I'm going to catch a swarm in it. I'm going to show you now a couple of other things just to make it a little bit more attractive, and this is a real belt and braces method. That will not fail. I'm not going to go into loads of detail. People on this channel would have seen this loads. If you can get hold of some black comb, go and beg it, borrow it from another beekeeper. Don't even worry about cutting it to size, trying to put frames in there. Just rest it down somewhere in there. The bees will swarm all over it. And as long as you've got that entrance disc on there, it means that as soon as the bees go in there— that's assuming you've got it somewhere where you can see them going in— Then all you need to do is just bang them into a beehive. And your bait hive is complete. So this box here is a little bit small for this 14 by 12 frame. All I would do is I'd just cut the bottom of it off, put it to one side like that, make sure it's up to one side, even screw it in if you need to. You don't want it kind of like falling across like that because then the bees won't think the box is as big. Keep it off to one side. That really is the belt and braces method. I wouldn't do anything above that if I was trying to catch swarms on my own. So there you go. That's my £1.50 swarm trap. I'm going to put this up somewhere. I'm going to catch a swarm in it this year, and I'll follow this video up showing I'm showing you how to deal with a colony that's just in a big box like this, because you could put frames in here with starter strips. It does make it easier, but each time you do something like that, you're adding cost. I wanted this one here to be the cheapest of the cheapest bait hives, and I've succeeded in doing it for £1.50. So in terms of where you're going to site this, put a brick on top of it so the roof doesn't blow off. Face it south or southeast. Have it at least that high up off the ground, maybe about head height. But anything up to like 3 or 4 meters is good as well. But you really don't need it that high. I used to say get it up as high as you possibly can, and I've just found it doesn't make a huge amount of difference. As long as it's about head height, that will do. You don't want it down on the ground. The bees don't like it too close to the ground. Bit hit and miss down there. Get it up to head height though, you'll have really good success. So there you go. That's the video complete. If you've got a version of cheap beekeeping, different way of doing bait hives, stick it in the comments. I'm always eager to learn new and different ways of doing things. Hope you enjoyed that video though. Happy swarm hunting. I love swarm season. I love catching swarms. Definitely going to do some this year without my beekeeping suit on. It's going to be so much fun. 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.