An 'Old Beekeepers' Trick for Successful SWARM Traps!

hey friends welcome back pick up my last be video you know that my hives are gone now these are dead and I talked about putting up swarm traps and I think today's the day I think I got everything ready I have two swarm traps that I built I have four frames of comb that I pulled from my dead hives I'm gonna pop four in each I've also burnt the insides of my swarm traps it's one of the things that my my bee mentor is that old early gentleman I think he's about 70 you said his dad was a beekeeper and he always burnt the inside of his hives so I'm taking that one step further I'm gonna burn the inside of mine of my swarm traps and the thought here is a lot of times feral bees will nest in trees and the old-timers always thought that their favorite trees for bees to nest him would be ones that were hit by lightning they would catch on fire there'd be a nice hollow burnt burnt out part in the middle and that was their favorite home so he's been doing it for years he says it works great he does it on his normal hives he said it just creates a more comfortable environment for them so I'm gonna give it a shot I got my some lemongrass oil we can take these in the garage now we'll get them assembled I'm going to just throw some screws in the side to hold the lids on and we'll get them hung so here's my frames that I'm working with nice and dark all drawn out there might be two my last video about my bees there might be a couple combs that have maybe half of half filled with a little bit of honey maybe they definitely should have more food at this time of the year so what I'm gonna do like I mentioned there's four frames in each swarm trap I don't want to pack it completely full because I have read and heard that they definitely do like a little bit of space they don't want to show up in a hive and have it be completely jam-packed full a little bit of space that way they feel like they got something to work with here next thing we're gonna do is some lemongrass oil this put this up on Amazon and a q-tip I'm going to lightly say dab the entrance to the swarm trap with some lemongrass oil I'm gonna put someone on the other end of the q-tip as well and I'm just gonna drop it in the box that way there's some residual residue left behind there we go so I'm gonna grab my screw gun we'll get these basically built drilled a small little hole in the side I'm just gonna put a single wood screw in there just the hole but I'm good I don't want I got a family of bees that do move in here they don't want a storm to come along and knock the lid off and set me back you know come back one more piece of the puzzle I forgot I did put the screws on the sides to hold the lids on and I remembered they need a door if I do catch one I need a way to bring them back safely so these are the doors that I went with a little sliding doors you can switch it to fully open a queen excluder style or just a vent there's already a hole pre-drilled I already had these installed at one point I took them off when I put the boiled linseed oil on these to protect them there we go open for business vacancy no vacancy I wanted to put a little sign on here they said for rent first month free I may end up decorating them at some point I put some type of probably some type of label of of who I am and what's my phone number and where do I live because if I do end up putting any of these off property I want people to have a way to get a hold of me if somebody stumbles across it and thinks hey what is this thing let's go find a ladder let's go hang so this is my tree I picked this is the north side of our houses right there just a walnut tree I'm gonna put this up I don't know eight ten feet up supposedly they like it when they're up off the ground a little bit so this one I'm gonna put up high the next one I'm gonna do a little bit lower cuz I'm not gonna haul the ladder all the way out there so a big nail I'm not gonna drive it in too deep because I want to pull this back out when I'm done all right let's see what happens facing south that direction south there so [Music] a little bit of a change of plans I was gonna there's an oak tree that's a little smaller than this just down a little ways maybe 50 feet or so but I like this patent with a little better this is a pretty big hot wood tree I don't know it'd be a good 5 feet across I don't know how long it's been here but coming up right on the side of this tree this is the south-facing side I'm gonna reach up as high as I can pull my nail up there and hang it there you can see out the back here this I don't know how big this field is here the neighbor last year he grew corn out there the year before that he did soybean I'm not real crazy about the spray and the things like that he's gonna do this year but I'm hoping that by the time swarm season is done that's when he's gonna start spraying at least that's my hope but I'm gonna put it here for now I can always move it if I need to [Music] all right well that was fun hopefully hopefully we catch something I can always leave them here I can always move them somewhere else I'll just see how it goes Russell thought about putting someone at my dad's house he lives about ten miles away from here he's guys nice woods in his back of his house and then the Front's all open so I got a lot of options at this point I could also hit up some of my neighbors I had a neighbor that lives like a half a mile down the road I'm kind of friends with so I might build some more if if it doesn't go good with two I'm gonna build more I'll go up bump up to four figure the more you have the better your odds and they're really not that bad to make I think maybe I think I got maybe twenty dollars in each one maybe fifteen something like that so the planes are cruising by it's about I don't know where time it was probably about six o'clock and getting hungry it's time to fire up the grill and make some dinner it's beautiful out today about 70 degrees almost 68 70 72 I don't know when it's days like today I don't even check to see what it is it doesn't matter so I will leave a link to our playlist with all of our other beekeeping videos birds are loud today this is my second year as a beekeeper so I'm just learning if you're learning just like me you can follow along learn from some of my mistakes I hope I guess maybe you can't really call me a beekeeper anymore since all my bees are dead but I'll come back from this thanks for joining guys

Channel: That 1870's Homestead

Views: 86,157

Rating: 4.8499541 out of 5

Keywords: free bees, swarm trap, how to trap bees, bait hive, lemongrass oil, trap honeybees, wildbees, feral bees, catching bees, honey bees, dead bees, beekeeping 101, overwinter bees, beekeeping, beekeeping basics, beekeeping for beginners, beekeeping mistakes, beekeeping mistake, beehive, beginner beekeeping, new beekeeper, beekeeping (interest), backyard beekeeping, bee swarm, natural beekeeping, bee swarm trap

Id: Vm2bgzJw8C8

Length: 9min 12sec (552 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 11 2019