In this episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping, Laurence Edwards walks viewers through the complete process of retrieving a swarm that has entered a bait hive. He stresses starting the operation late in the evening to capture the maximum number of bees, then either inspecting the bait hive in situ (if safely reachable) or bringing it down to the ground for inspection. Once confirmed as a swarm, the hive is sealed and moved to a dedicated quarantine apiary—separate from production colonies—to prevent disease spread. Edwards advises keeping the swarm in quarantine for one to two brood cycles, during which a thorough inspection for disease is performed before integration into a production colony. He demonstrates the massive size of a captured swarm, showing full brood coverage across all frames, abundant nectar and pollen stores, and a healthy brood pattern. Recognizing the colony’s overcrowding, he explains the need for a split to avoid a secondary swarm. He also discusses feeding practices, recommending against immediate feeding to reduce disease risk, and only considering supplemental feeding after a week if needed. Finally, Edwards reflects on the effectiveness of bait hives, noting that he deployed about 40 this season, captured 10‑12 swarms, and plans to cease bait hive use after mid‑June to avoid later‑season complications. The video combines practical field techniques, colony health assessment, and seasonal management strategy.
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Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. So it's been an absolutely crazy manic week, swarms left, right, and center, and lots of swarms in my bait hives. So in this video, I'm going to show you how to retrieve a swarm from a bait hive. A few easy steps to go through, but just kind of need to make sure that you do them in the right order. So what I do is I come to the apiary late in the evening, that's the first one. If you want to catch as many bees as possible, come later in the evening, you should catch as many bees as you possibly can. Then what you want to do is, if you can, get up to the bait hive and inspect it in situ. I always find that a lot easier than taking it back down to the ground and then realizing there's something wrong or you have to leave it back up there. So if it's safe to do so, get up there and inspect it in situ. If it's not, take it down to the floor, inspect it on the floor, and then if necessary, you can put it back up there. You want to take the bait hive, close it up, and then take it to a safe apiary. So don't take it to your normal apiary, you might spread disease. So have a safe place that you can take these bees, give them at least one, preferably 2 brood cycles to kind of show that brood So you can do a full inspection and make sure that there's no diseases present. So let's get up in the tree and let's take a look at this swarm. So the first thing you want to be looking for, you need to confirm that there is actually a swarm in there, and the easiest way of doing that is to wait and see some bees bringing back some pollen. So we're just going to wait and see if they bring back some pollen. And there we go. If you saw that one there, there was a bee bringing back pollen. And there's another one there just on the buckle. The other thing is that you can smell the honey. Like, I can literally smell the honey coming from this hive. So I'm hoping It's going to be a nice size one, but we'll open it up, we'll take a look. Right, so I got to the top of the ladder to do the inspection on the bees, and oh my God, I've left this one too late. I didn't even bother opening them up, and I'll show you the reason why. Oh, I reckon that weighs 40 kilos. So not only have I missed the swarm in this one, they've absolutely jam-packed it full of nectar. So I'm not going to bother opening it up now. I'm going to take it home, I'm going to put it into its new spot, so its new quarantined apiary, and then I'll flash forward and we'll open it tomorrow when it's light and I'll show you what's inside. But I'm telling you, it's going to be a big one. Right, so we've got the bees back to the quarantine apiary, which for the time being is the flat garage roof in my garden. Now we're going to take a look inside this nuc and show you how big this swarm was. So obviously they're kind of Built out all of the frames, probably left it a couple of weeks too late getting them out of here, but they're absolutely jam-packed. So we'll go through and show you how big this swarm is. So you can see straight away, absolutely covering all of those 6 frames. A lot of the bait hives, I actually put 6 frames above the other 6, so there's 12 frames in total, and they're covering all 12 frames. So we'll pull out some frames and show you what the brood pattern's like. Really nice brood pattern. Like, these are actually really gentle, calm bees. Sometimes the swarms that I get around here, really not very nice. These are actually really, really good. Um, so yeah, very happy with them. Nice brood pattern on that side as well. As you can see though, they're really running out of space. They're absolutely jam-packed full of nectar and pollen as well. Um, they're wall-to-wall brood, uh, top and bottom. So we're gonna need to do some sort of split on these, or those will be swarming again. I mean, these must have swarmed at least 2 or 3 weeks ago. I do monitor the boxes, but a lot of the time it's difficult to see whether it's kind of just scout activity or actually bees. You can see here lots of eggs in this frame, lots of drone brood, pollen, nectar. Really, really healthy colony of bees, this is. Some more frames here, brood in all stages, just capping over now. Brood looks healthy though. Lots of nectar in this top box. I mean, she's laid up the middle of that there, but it's surrounded by nectar and pollen. Really, really strong colony. And then we just got a frame full of nectar at the edge there. So top box, four frames of brood. 2 frames just full of nectar. Absolutely nowhere for that queen to lay though, um, so we need to do a manipulation or they will just swarm out of this box again quite quickly. So then bottom box, that's fully laid up, fully laid up with eggs both sides. Again, fully laid up with eggs both sides. So there we have it. It was a little bit windy there, so I just thought I'd leave the bees to it, come and finish the video off up here. Um, really, really good-sized swarm, completely covering 12 frames of brood, um, and about 8 or 9 frames of actual brood in all stages there. Completely outgrown that nuc box already and will swarm within maybe a week or so if left to its own devices. So it just goes to show though how good those bait hives are in terms of you can just put them up and you can just forget about them, and then if a swarm goes into them and lands in them, you don't need to go there that day, you don't even need to go there that week. You've got some time just to go around, take your time, and let the bees kind of draw out that comb, and then you've got a swarm. Yeah, so that's the idea. Just take it down when it's suitable for you. So they're really attractive for the bees, and I think they're really, really attractive for the beekeepers as well. So I will certainly be using more of them, putting more and more of those up each season. We put about 40 up this season. I probably had between 10 and 12 swarms in it so far. I think we've probably got another couple of weeks where potentially we can catch swarms, and then I'll just take them down. I don't really want any swarms kind of past, past the middle of June. I think it's my cutoff. They tend to become a bit more trouble than they're worth after June. So we'll give you a full count and let you know how many we've caught, but this video is just going to give you an update as to how you take those bait hives down from the tree and then what you need to do with them. So like I say, take it down in the evening, try and catch as many bees as you possibly can, take it to a safe apiary where you're not keeping any of your production colonies or any of your stocks, a quarantine apiary. Give it 2 or 3 weeks You want to see at least 1 or 2 cycles of brood ideally, and you need to check that brood, make sure there's no disease, and then you can put it into one of your production colonies. There's no need to feed the swarms. I never feed my swarms. I mean, they are built, they're designed to kind of carry that food with them, so they will draw out the boxes. After about a week or so, if they've kind of used all of that energy to draw foundation and then the weather's poor, then yeah, sure, you can kind of feed them after a week, but definitely don't feed them as soon as you've got them. It's a really, really bad way of spreading disease by doing that. So that's it for today's video. Really, really hope you've enjoyed this one. I certainly have. I love going out, I love catching swarms, but even better, I love kind of bees coming to me for free. Free bees coming into my bait hives, it's absolutely fantastic. And we'll do loads more videos of this because it's happening loads at this time of year. So thanks for watching. Please hit the subscribe button. Please hit the bell so you're notified of every video. I'll see you next time.
