Swarm Catching Machine

came by today to split that hive right there that three stack i went into them last night check them out see what status was they got a lot of swarm cells all through it they're all open none of them capped they'll be a couple days so they're capped but that means that they're about to swarm right now so i came over here today to make splits i'm not sure if there's still an active colony in this stack right here if there's not they're scouting it and i've got a swarm trap set up over here that i set up before we went to california and there's a swarm trap on the other end of the stand you can see it's two mediums and deep i hate that i left those mediums on over winter because it's full of brood all the way through so now i got to work them out of the mediums into some deeps and uh yeah i hadn't pulled that one apart yet because it's got propolis holding everything together and the boxes are kind of rotten so when i do i'm going to destroy the boxes came by today to split it up and they weren't this active when i pulled up i was on the phone sat there talking and 10 minutes into my conversation on the phone they started doing this they've been doing this for about 25 minutes now uh swarming doesn't take this long when they're gonna swarm they pile out go airborne just hope they don't swarm i was hoping for them to calm down so i could go ahead and split them up they ain't mad at me they just uh i don't know maybe they're practicing hey let's all practice for one it's time to swarm oh yeah yeah set this one up for a swarm trap too and uh no bottom board but there's a gap right here it's a beautiful day beautiful day for a swarm it's let's start raining tomorrow and we're not supposed to have another clear day for almost a week so i i have to make those splits today these here these here some i split before we went to california split them on brood walk away splits let them make their own cells i got to go through there make sure they've had enough time to make sales and have a queen emerged i got to go through there and make sure that that's what they did that one's not quite as strong so so i gotta check those uh check the health of those if either one of those didn't produce queens i've got queens ready to go in them right now that's what's up for today welcome back to the 628 dirt rooster channel where hobby beekeeping is a way of life i thought they were scouting this and i may have already called this one medicine and uh it may be working [Music] i did already catch a swarm in this and i can hear him yeah most definitely already caught something in this box got a lot of smoker before i go in there all right we'll puff some smoke on those things i already got and go back in there again i'm gonna put the entrance real quick and lift the lid and puff that let it marinate for a few seconds yes sir we caught us a bright nice swarm i imagine it wasn't long after we left for california they've been in here a little bit that's just about full of honey right there one sided cat brood they've been in here a little while definitely right by the time we left so it's been uh what's today i gotta check the dates but it's been about three weeks since i left to go to california and there was not a hive in here when i left there was drone comb but there was no hive or no no live colony this one looks good though man we'll talk about a layer wow now you wouldn't think they'd have done all that in that short amount of time but just to show you how long this colony's been in here there's no um no workers emerging yet all this cat brood all these frames across the top there's no workers emerging out of it yet so they haven't been in here long enough to run a cycle of brew which is 24 days from time and eggs laid to the time a worker emerges so yeah it's a swarm in that one and so let me show you what kind of equipment mr ed makes fun of my equipment but look hey that box is falling apart but guess what it caught super super productive let me go see if this one's calm down you oh they have calm down went back inside they didn't swarm out or i would have heard them because you'll you'll hear a swarm before you see them so they're still in there they'll get split up today before i forget about it i'm going to show you further evidence that they moved in and started cleaning this old box up so the trash they've been dragging out they're not using this for an entrance but they started cleaning up dragging trash out look at that box right too there we go right there mr ed should be drooling over a box like that that is a swarm catching machine mostly because of all that right there all that wax and propolis and old hive having occupied it for many years old hives yeah i might put some frames so yeah i'm gonna clean that bottom board off stack these two boxes together and put some good frames in them see where to catch with them too i mean look at these jewels they're the only thing holding them together is the termites holding hands [Applause] but look man swarm catching machines telling you which is how i caught this one right here this one's been in here since last summer or fall i don't know we'll look at the boxes just a stack of dent and ding trash material boom swarm trap magic we got scouts checking this box there's three bees in that one walking around so here's my plan for these mediums i don't like having brood and mediums i need to phase out mediums completely i'm going to take that one these two set them up on a pallet in the back of my truck and move them to my house i'll leave that bottom here wherever the queen winds up she winds up i'll put a queen in whichever one goes empty and that one on the stand i'll figure out where the queen's at and it make splits and put the uh opening a new location uh new queen for here right here i don't really care much which queen ends up in that one because they're not in the swarm mode that one over there that is in swarm mode i want to move that queen so that she feels like she has swarmed and she's having to start fresh and so that's my uh method of my madness at the moment this is what a commercial four-way pallet looks like in the beekeeping world if you talk about four-way pallets and like uh construction four-way pallet just means you can come at it from all four sides four-way pallet and beekeeping means there's spaces for four hives you can only pick it up from either end not the sides six-way pallet would be six eight framers and these are called u-clips there's u-clips and w clips you clips just hold the you slide your box over this so they don't fall off the pallet in in uh transport check out the box i called him man over here that's the best box over here it caught someone who caught the bees yeah i guess so they had a whole whole wide selection over there and they chose this one something that attracted them they just found it first i guess yeah yeah i had uh one that swarmed i don't know when but it was that way that was still full of brood but it was a deep frames yeah and it was ending in wall-to-wall yeah this one came in here about three weeks ago okay i bought that old tractor up there i finally got it over the house it's got a bunch of parts i mean you can always boil them and build them but it's got a complete power steering system on it my price to use power steering system from the track replacing baton rouge sixteen hundred dollars for a used system so well that one's got wheels it's got a good hood there you go another one yeah another one to add to the collection yep yeah those parts on that to fix these two i'm gonna fix that one hopefully the steering i think there's anything wrong with that one from [Music] just a little bit looks like eight queen cells in the bottom of this box and then some cups in it they laid down it's got an egg in it i said they're laid that one's got an egg in it and i'm sure the rest of them do too i just cut i just cut one open to see they're not sealed they're uh they're open they're brand new she may still be in there yeah the queen's still in here they haven't swarmed yet but they sure were listening right here's got a larva that's pretty good a longing for sure get her out of there yeah i'm fishing i'm moving right now i'll look for the queen later i'm just gonna move these boxes uh this box here has got at least two queen cells in it sure yeah this bottom box i'd split it two ways and put them in some five frames don't come back over here without a hood on they're getting stirred up haven't been in this one in a while it's got plenty of propolis sticking it this one's been in here since last summer just gotta go through real quick separate these out see if the queen's in here she likely is in one of those two mediums that i just put on my truck got a lot of good laying queen cup in the middle of the brood of pollen on there it's a good feed frame and brew frame another cup with nothing in it all right we got one queen cell right here on this frame nothing in this there's a queen cell with a egg in it to be careful where i put it so i don't crush that queen so so there's some drone comb good chance to check for varroa if you're pulling anything and you cut open drone cells no grow on any of that i don't see any in any of that it's easier to see if you don't crush them up they just they still stand out even if you crush them up if you go through them enough no varroa no treatment overrode had to do alcohol wash and know for sure but i don't see anything all right this box here is queenless i'm fairly certain okay this box here is queenless now got two queen cells in it but they're at such an early stage i don't want to wait so i'm going to take this to my house i'm going to put a mated queen in with them introduce introduce a one-year-old mated queen in a cage with a candy plug that one there i'll do the same thing go through it put it in a nuke box i'll leave a nuke box with those four frames sitting right here i'll add another frame to them um same thing i'll go through that and see if i can find a queen in there if there's no queen in there i'll come back and add a queen to them but i'll leave a box right here to catch forage bees because it's two o'clock in the afternoon there's still a lot of bees out and they there's not another active hive in this road right here the next active hive is around the corner there they possibly would join that one but scratching the stingers out of my arms but um i want to catch them all in this colony this one's blocked off with drone brood comb the bottom of it's screen so they won't overheat and i won't have to block this one off because i'm leaving them right here letting them work those other there's other uh two mediums i took off of it and put them back in my truck i won't have to block those off either take those and set them up on my yard and let them fly right from there they're not not gonna have to be closed off now this one right here started out as a swarm trap there's a swarm lure propolized in the corner i can't remember if i caught this as a swarm or if i put bees in it and just never take the lure out of it but that's what swarmlord valves look like it's still good a little bit of something in it there must be some lemongrass oil dried in the bottom of it well the lid is still in the propolis the swarmlord although it still has lemongrass oil in it it's probably not any good anymore these vials are made to where they leech the scent i can't i can't smell anything but i can't smell anything but propolis on it even if i open it up even the lemongrass oil on the lid i don't smell anything but propolis so it's probably not any good um you know these things aren't made to last forever and i'll drop it in another box just in case but i doubt that there's any lemongrass scent left in that uh hey there's mcqueen there's mcqueen lightning mcqueen no ain't no marker i'm just gonna to put it back in back in this box and move her and swap this i was going to move this wooden box in my house but now i'm just going to move this right here to my house because uh because the queen is on it i'll give her some drunk comb to lay in nine nine quit looking and this right here uh not necessarily a desirable frame because of the way they've drawn it but it's got brood on it we're going to use it for the time being we'll move it out in favor of some fresh wax foundations so they can draw them out evenly same with this one this right here is built all wonky crazy wonky cone barely touched this side just got plenty of drone brood which we want right now because we're making queens and it's got plenty of food storage in it so we're going to keep this one for the time being and of course this is the last frame we have to keep it because we're keeping the rest and they fit together like puzzle pieces when you when they draw them out like that you don't have a choice but to keep them because the way they built they just fit together in the box there you go there's a march a lot of you like to see you can make bees march without catching a swarm just take everything out of the box i'll start running around the box looking to see where everything went since i got these two boxes touching a lot of them are finding our way over a lot of these airborne ones find their way over we're gonna stick a foundation that they can work on over in there it's got a little bit of wax moth damage but not much uh i damaged this and this wax moth damage isn't very heavy in that though it's not brood cone brood comb is where our wax moths love to get now i don't know where the queen is right now so my mistake i should have held her out for last but i'm gonna carefully slide this comb down in there ever so slowly i'd rather take five minutes to push the frame in and then crush mcqueen now when i get these set up at home i'll release them and let them fly this is not a cutout it's not a swarm capture this is their comb their queen they got drum drawn i mean they've got brood that they want to abandon so as soon as i get home i can pop the entrance on it and let them fly but for right now i'm going to close off the entrance and block them in there and this box that y'all are sitting on top of is about to trade spots with this one right here so that they'll all the field bees have come back to this box i'm gonna unplug the entrance unplug the entrance and let them run because all the field bees going in that's about the location they were going in that other box so they'll take right to this and fill that one up to over capacity but until we get another queen in there it doesn't really matter they ain't about to swarm uh with no queen and with open cells they as far as they know a swarm just happened because everybody's gone including the queen and these boxes right here they just this lid folds back to shut to open it you just open pop it out and fold it the other way fold it down these right here i'm not blocking them off at the moment but they were so overpopulated anyway we'll be fine so i know both of these are queenless they're full of brood full of bees i can sit these on top of a um 10 frame deep with some drawn comb with a queen excluder and queen down below and let them start working the bottom and work them out of these mediums and move these mediums out of rotation [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right swapping a few things around this deep that was sitting right here there's no is now coming over here in the swarm trap location i'm gonna leave this bottom empty it's got a nice fresh smell in it just got that strong colony out of it i'm gonna stick this one on top of it with some drawn comb some old brood frames and i expect this thing to catch us warm although it's in good shape the bottom board's got some rot holes in so maybe that'll attract them mr ed i use the last couple of dribbles of my lemongrass oil on top of these frames here but like uh maybe two drops left in it the rest of it leaked out in the door of my truck so my truck smells like a swarm trap at the moment all right let's go reclaim those splits sun will be sitting here in about 20 minutes we'll be done we go edit video

Channel: 628DirtRooster Bees

Views: 64,791

Keywords: beekeeping, bee swarm, swarm trap, swarm lure, bee box, beekeepers

Id: m663_dVM-8w

Length: 30min 10sec (1810 seconds)

Published: Mon May 17 2021