The Secret Method Swarms Cannot Resist, How To Catch Free Bees Every Spring

Today I'm going to show you a swarm that I caught in my bait boxes. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. I'll cut to the chase on this one. I stacked up some boxes in my apiary. When I stack them up like this, I purposely leave a little bit of a gap there just in case there's any passing swarms. I found a swarm in one of these boxes today, and I'm going to show you how good this swarm is. At this moment in time, I don't know whether it's one of my own colonies. I always suspect when I find a swarm that's moved into my apiary, I always assume it's one of my colonies. However, all of my queens are marked. All of my queens have got clipped wings as well. So if we find a queen in there with clipped wings, that would be amazing because they probably carried her there. But also you'll be able to see the marking. So I'll be honest, if it's one of mine, I'll let you know, and then we'll probably do a bit of hunting around to try and find the colony that swarmed as well. But all I'm going to do is I'm just going to show you how I set that up, how big the swarm is. Hopefully we can find the queen. Hopefully we can see some eggs. And if not, we'll try and find the virgin queen in there as well. So I'll get my bee suit on and I'll go and show you this swarm. Right, so I don't often film in this apiary because it is incredibly dark in here. So sorry if it's a little bit pixelated, a little bit dark, the footage, but this is one of my apiaries. It's a really, really good apiary here. Like, you'll be amazed at the amount of honey the bees in this apiary bring in. Lots of very mature lime trees here. It's a summer apiary for us. Bees are building up now, getting really, really strong, and then they hit the lime flows here. So although it's a bit dark, it's a bit shaded, it's not ideally what I want. It's on the edge of woodland, so you can see just behind there, that's where it ends. They do get a little bit of light coming in here in the morning, but the bees perform really, really well here. That's why we're in such a dark spot of the woods. But this is it here. Now I know that just looks like a normal hive, but it's not actually. It's a floor, a feeder, and then a roof, which means that I've had a failed colony there. You can see that around all of my apiaries because I shake the bees out and then I'll go and move the brood box to somewhere else to let the bees go wherever. So that is a sign that that's a failed colony. And then what I do, if I've got surplus boxes lying around, I just stack them up like that. So this is actually a Suyenti roof at the bottom. Suyenti roofs can double up as floors. Really, really handy. Actually quite a nice design feature of an overall poorly designed hive. And then I've just got a 14 by 12 box National deep and then a roof on top, and I just stacked loads of rubbishy frames in there. These are all the frames that were due to get melted down at the end of the year. There's some super ones in there that are just broken, there's some national deeps, there's some 14x12s. I just stacked it up knowing full well that that's probably really, really attractive to a passing swarm. Lo and behold, it's full of bees. So I'm going to get in there now, I'm going to see how big the swarm is, and I'm going to check it to see if it's mine. And if there's a mated queen in there. So this is what the top box is looking like. As you can see, we've got a real mix of frames in here, loads of DM1s, loads of frames that I'm trying to recycle out, and not a bad-sized swarm covering maybe 7 frames. Be interesting to see how far down they go because obviously that's just the top box there. They might go all the way down into there as well, but regardless, really happy with that. That's, that's a nice-sized swarm. So I'll get in there, see if I can see Any eggs or any queens. Right, so I just tried to lift the box off there and there's a massive cluster of bees underneath there. So I'm just going to try and get the camera in and just show you where the bees are clustering, because it's this classic thing that I do on all of my bait hives, which is put frames up at the top and then leave a void underneath, or at least a partial void. The bees just seem to really, really love it, seem to cluster down underneath it. It does give you a bit of a headache if you don't find them immediately because they just draw down and probably go a little bit wild with the comb. But I get such a good success rate doing it, even on a 6x6 frame nuc, that doubles up really nicely. But something like this, like a 14x12 in a National Deep with a mixture of frames and gaps, can attract some really nice big swarms. So I'm going to tilt that top box up now and just show you what it looks like underneath. So there you go, you can see there they're drawing down that frame already there. You can see it all being drawn down. I'm gonna have to fix that because otherwise it's gonna be a right old mess. But lots of bees. Really happy with this. This is a massive swarm. So this looks great. I'm going to go away. I'm going to go and get another National Deep box. I'm going to fix this while I'm here because otherwise they're just going to go crazy and they're going to draw comb all over the place. So in this video, I'll try and find eggs. I'll try and find a mated queen, and I'm going to reconfigure the box, leave it in situ for them to grow into a colony. Right, so first off, I'm just going to go through the frames as they are. Try and find that queen. Makes it so much easier if you can find her, and we'll see whether she's one of my queens or whether it's a feral swarm that's just chosen this spot here. So you can see there the bees drawing down. They love these big frames. So this is a national deep frame, and they're trying to extend it down. You can see how if you don't get there in time, it can be really, really difficult to manage these colonies. I'm just going to take that off though, gently take it off, and I'm going to get these onto a double deep with the correct frames. And then they can do what they want in there. So then this is what the bottom box looks like. As you can see, still loads and loads of bees in there. That's the void that I left that I find really does well at attracting those bees. And then there's a few of these frames over here, so it's probably a 10-frame swarm. Really happy with that, really good-sized swarm. Still can't see any eggs though, so chances are there's no mated queen in here and I can't find the virgin. But I'm not going to fret too much about that. All I'm going to do is I'm just going to Put it all back together, make sure there's no gaps, leave them to it, see how they get on. So famous last words. There's the virgin. Definitely a virgin. You can tell by the way she's so frigid, and this swarm has definitely been here for about three or four days just by the amount of comb that they've drawn, by the amount of honey that they've stored. They've gone out and stored. So all in all, really really good news because we've got a virgin. The weather's so good at the moment, so. Almost certain to get her mated. And even better than that, it's not one of my own swarms. Closer look at that virgin there. It's the 3rd swarm I've had a look at this year, and all of them around here, they have such dark, dark queens. Like, look at that queen, she is pitch black. So be very, very interested to see what this colony turns out to be like. So I'm just going to take that frame with the virgin on, put that back down into the bottom of the box. And where I've got my void in this box now, I'm just going to fill it up with some I haven't got any 14 by 12 frames, but as long as you're not leaving gaps in the middle, very unlikely to draw any wild comb. They should start off at the top and then draw things downwards. This way though makes it a lot easier to manage the colony. So there you go, I've filled up that box now. 14 by 12 box, but it's full of national deep frames with foundation, some drawn comb, and I'm going to put the national deep box on top of that so they've got plenty of space to work with. So there you go, really, really nice swarm. Don't turn off the video yet though, I'm going to give you a couple of weeks update on this colony. So at the moment we've got a virgin queen in there, hopefully next few days she'll go out, she'll get mated, I'll come back, I'll check maybe in a couple of weeks, hopefully we'll see some eggs, hopefully we see some capped worker brood. Final thing to note about this colony though and this swarm is that you do really need to be very, very careful when it comes to disease risk with swarms. That could have EFB, that could have AFB, no problem whatsoever. But the fact that they've chosen to come into your apiary, you're almost better to quarantine this apiary until you prove that that is healthy, as opposed to going and moving that out. They're going to be around. So my advice, if you're in this situation and you've got bait boxes in your apiary, or they just choose to come and stay in your apiary, just leave them there, monitor them, but go and wash your bee suit, go and throw away the gloves that you're wearing. Clean your hive tool, just do everything you possibly can to avoid any transmission from the bees that are in that box there and all of the other colonies in the apiary. Right, so we'll fast forward a couple of weeks. Hopefully we'll get that queen mated, see some eggs, see some worker brood, and then that colony will build up really nice going into winter. Right, so 2 weeks later, we're going to look inside this colony here, the swarm that we captured a few weeks ago. Hopefully we're going to find a queen. Hopefully she's going to be mated. Maybe we'll see some eggs. Hopefully we see some capped brood. If we see the capped brood, we're going to take a look at it, check that there's no disease. Again, just follow all precautions. You don't know what this colony is like yet, so all of the gloves that you're going to use, just destroy them after the use. Clean down your bee suit as well. Let's get in, see how the colony is getting on. So looking at that top box there, really nice, big, strong swarm still. Hopefully they're going to have extended that right down now and they'll be covering 7 frames underneath as well. So it's a really good sizable swarm. We'll get inside, see if we can find the queen, see if we can see some eggs, see if we can see some capped brood. Right, so really good news, the queen is definitely mated. Got eggs, we've got larvae, we've got one or two capped cells there. Probably not going to judge it on just those two capped cells, but we'll wait and see, give it another week or so, and then look at once they've capped over the whole frame. But as you can see, we've got larvae, We've got eggs, got brood in all stages. That means we've got a mated queen. Busy bees as well. Look at all that capped stores on there as well. So they are going for it. So really good to see we've got a mated queen. I'm going to go through and I'm going to try and find the queen. Might be quite difficult. I always find it difficult in this apiary finding queens because it is just so dark. You get a little bit of dappled light, so it is difficult. I'd like to see the queen though because I want to show you the difference in the size of her abdomen, because when we saw her before, it Easily identifiable as a virgin. Hopefully if we see her now, that abdomen would have lengthened, easily identifiable as a mated queen. So I'm just going to do a little bit more digging, see if I can find a frame with some more capped brood on it, see if I can find the queen as well. So the brood on this frame is a little bit more advanced, probably 20 or so capped cells on here. You can see just a little area of capped brood. More than happy that that is capped worker brood, definitely not drone brood, so it's a Successful mating for this queen, and then you can see on all of those cells there you've got loads of larvae that are ready for capping. So this frame, give it a few days, that will be fully capped up. We can take a look at that pattern and assess how well we think that queen's been mated. Definitely mated though, so I'm really happy with that because she was 100% a virgin before. Going to continue my hunt now, see if I can find that queen. So there's my queen, and I can't quite think back to how small she was, but I remember looking at the video before and thinking it's a really small queen. She's definitely a virgin. And I think there's no doubt whatsoever that that is no longer a virgin. Really nice elongated abdomen, very black. I just can't get over how dark that queen is. She, she is pitch black. But we'll give her another week or so, week and a half. I want to come back and I want to assess all of these frames when they're fully capped over with brood. But nice to have seen the queen again. She's definitely mated. Full of brood in all stages, and you can just tell by how long her abdomen is that she, she has— yeah, she's gone out on a successful mating flight. I'll come back, I'll assess the brood to see what the pattern's like, and I'll assess it to see if there's any brood disorders as well. But from the looks of it, things should be okay. So there we have it, we've caught some free bees in one of our bait boxes that was just some stacked up supers and some brood boxes. It was definitely an unmated queen. She's gone out in the really nice weather. She's mated. The bees are pretty much filling that top box there. It's a couple of frames in the bottom box, but not too much action down there at all. There's nothing in the way of brood. There's no stores. There's a couple of frames of bees down there as well. I'm gonna fast forward a week or so and I'll show you what this colony looks like in one week. I just wanna get that capped brood so I can pull out a frame, and show you what the pattern's like so we can confirm a successful mating. More importantly, we can review what that brood looks like to see if it's showing any signs of AFB or EFB. So don't go anywhere, I'll fast forward this video, I'll come back in 1 week's time. Right, so we're going to do the final part of this video now. We're going to check to confirm that the queen is mated, have a look at her laying pattern, and most importantly, check for disease. Let's get straight in, see how they're doing. So again, we've got a really nice colony of bees in here. Obviously they're not grown much because there's no brood that's going to have emerged yet, but we're going to see hopefully a really rapid expansion soon. Lots of bees though, nice big swarm this one, really happy with it. Let's get in, see if we can see some brood. And here we go, we've got some nice capped brood within the colony, really healthy looking capped brood. Nothing wrong with that whatsoever. You can see the queen's mated well. Nice pattern there. You can never judge a queen on her first or second round of pattern, really. Give her a few goes to get it right. But even so, some nice tight clusters of bees there. Really, really happy with that. So another frame of brood here. Got some eggs and larvae down there. Nice ring of capped brood there. Really nice, capped on both sides. Lots of frames of brood in this colony now. And here we go, another frame of brood, probably the best of the bunch I'd say. That one's really good looking. Get a nice close look up of that. That is healthy looking brood, nothing sunken, nothing looking off at all, no signs of any foul brood diseases on there, no chalk brood, no sac brood, nothing at all. Looks like really nice good healthy brood. And there you go, another frame of brood. Really nice pattern on this one as well. You can see she's tightening it up. Good-looking queen head, definitely mated well. This colony is going to boom over the next few weeks, pretty much filling up a brood box now. But it's got 6 or 7 frames of brood here, so once all of that brood has emerged, it's going to be a very big colony indeed. Perfectly timed for the summer flows. And there we go, that's it for the video. I showed you how to catch swarms in your apiaries just by leaving a suitable size stack of supers with some brood comb in there, with a good space to get in at the bottom. That is the best way to catch swarms within your apiaries. Chances are, if you're catching swarms within your apiaries, they're probably going to be your own bees. But still, catching your own bees is better than losing your own bees. In this instance here, I've caught somebody else's bees, or I've caught a Feral colony, so I'm really interested to see how it goes. Not the friendliest of colonies, which is a shame because some of the feral ones I do catch are quite nice colonies. Little bit grumpy this one, and I am inspecting it late on in the day as well. But I hope you enjoyed that video. 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.