Swarm Traps: What you need to know, to be successful.

[Music] all right so today we're gonna talk about swarm traps I don't know a single beekeeper who does not get excited about catching swarms I don't I don't care how many hives I get I always get excited about catching swarms I always hang swarm traps and swarm traps is something that I actually kind of run into by accident I had I've been doing this since around 2009-2010 and I actually had a high of die in the winter and being lazy it won't clean the hive out I took the hive and set it at the end of my house near my basement door and figured I'd clean it later never got around to it and one day whenever I was walking by the hive I saw bees going in and out of it I didn't think much of it I figured they were just robbing it out and went by another day and I saw more bees when I cracked it open I found out there was a hive that had moved in now the unique thing is that hive was sitting on the ground and it was turned with the entrance facing my house about 4 feet from the house which is if you do is if you've done some research obviously you are if you're watching this video you'll know that that defies all the recommendations of swarm traps so you know just to get started you can hang swarm traps wherever and however you want to doesn't matter north south east or west eight foot high six foot high or thirty foot high you'll catch swarms but today's we're on a wood line and if you see this tree line down through here that is one of the things that I like to look for when I'm hanging swarm traps I like wood lines I like fence lines and I'll try to do some videos a couple different ones and be putting up but I like wood lines and fence lines or roadways those are just markers that you can see really really clearly from the sky which is would be the bees view from the sky I prefer my traps to be facing south like I say I've I've hung them every direction and I've caught swarms every direction but if I have my preference they will face south and I also prefer be my swarm traps to be eight to ten foot in the air with a clear entrance which is one of the main reasons I like tree lines and fence lines and roadways because they'll have a clear entrance no limbs in front of them eight to ten foot up is good because I don't like to carry more than a six foot stepladder whenever I'm hanging swarm traps so if I'm hanging climbing a six foot stepladder if I lean it up against the tree or open it up and I climb up it I don't have to go all the way to the top run and I can easily hang a trap eight foot off the ground so let's look at a few of the different styles form traps that I've used or the ones that I'm using now all right so this is the style that I'm going to use this year like say I've been doing this since 2009 2010 when I first caught that swarm and a hive I didn't really think anything about it I was excited about it but I didn't really think too much about it until it happened the next year same exact thing so what I started doing was I didn't have a lot of hives at the time so I couldn't hang hives in the trees so I started hanging nuke boxes in the trees and new boxes worked really well but they generally only caught small swarms and if you did catch a big swarm they would generally leave within a week or so they would run out of room they'd draw those five frames out run out of room if you left them in there a lot of people like to leave them in there a week kind of let them start laying to get established if you left them in there for a week you'd go back to a hive with most of the bees gone a bunch of brood laid up in Queens tails in it so that wasn't that didn't work so I built some more hives and I started hanging hives I used a little hanger kind of looks like like what you put a mailbox on it's a - before that was vertical I had another two before that was horizontal and a 45-degree cross pieced embrace it and I had it fixed the right length and everything to hold my bee hives I had solid bottom boards and what I would do is I would wrap a strap around the hive and that hanger and I would run a screw or two up through the hanger into the bottom of the hop and those worked really well as well but the problem is bee hives are expensive you set a beehive up on a tree you're sitting 75 to $100 bill up there on the tree and if you have them in places where people can see them which is nice because then people can let you know there's bees in them then those people can also come by I'd steal your bee hops so I needed a better way to catch swarms and I needed a cheaper way to catch swarms so I started doing some research on the Internet probably I don't know 2012 or so and I come across actual swarm traps and there's people who had plans and if you look at some of my past form trap videos especially the ones from last year you'll see the style that I used last year I used those for a couple years they work pretty well the problem was the tops I'll put some pictures in the video right here okay so these those are the swarm traps that I used and the problem was the plans that I used and I'll put the link in the description they call for political signs or coroplast for the lids wide it and do that i cheaped out and I used paneling well the problem with the paneling was it just really deteriorated quickly and so in 2016 I had a lot of success with those plans but it was a dry year in 2017 we had a very very wet year and I had an awful time with my swarm traps bowing still called a lot of swarms but not like I would like to so I've went to this this style I got this style from dr. leo I'll put a link to his website in the description below I saw dr. leo in Rock Hill South Carolina in the spring of 2000 17 and he's all-natural treatment free guide but he also has some good plans on catching swarm traps and some different high plans Russian style hives and things like that so I got these plans for him they're a little bit different than his I had some 3/4 plywood and some 7/8 plywood and I could not make mine exactly to his specifications but I did the best that I could and I think mine are just a little bit narrower and maybe not quite as tall but house you see it's a it's a box I'll put the plan description there for you see you can get all the dimensions it's a box the big thing is it has an actual top of telescoping lid with aluminum flashing now when you take the lid off you're gonna put a telescoping lid on a swarm trap then you're gonna have to have some type of inner cover well I didn't want to build an expensive inter cover so I went with the Mike Palmer Kirk Webster variety inter cover and I grab some old feed sacks from the chickens and cut those up and made feed sack inner covers and inside this box this form trap will actually hold six frames which is a little bit bigger than the ones that I was using last year the 30 liter traps those swarm traps will only hold five frames and inside the swarm traps I have just a frame of comb and just some empty frames so let's talk about baiting how do you bait a swarm trap well there's a bunch of different ways to bait a swarm trap dr. Leo recommends buying propolis or using your own preference and rather than Pro Plus inside the hive to make it smell like bees a lot of people recommend lemongrass whole some people recommend swarm commander you know there's there's a lot of different ways the old-timers used to rub peach tree leaves inside of them the way I do it I try to use old frames of a can because those old frames smell like bees I use one frame of old comb as you can see here this is actually a frame it's got a lot of drone comb on it drone brood and you know I don't didn't really want to melt it down and so and I needed some bait from us horn traps so that's what I'm using here just a frame of old comb I always put the comb in the middle I you I tried putting it on the ends one time when those storms move in they will go straight to the middle of the box and they will start building comb in the middle of the box if you will put a piece of comb in the middle of the box it gives them something to work start working on immediately the Queen can start laying immediately and it gives them something to base the next pieces of comb off of I don't use starter strips in my in my boxes I basically just use old frames old frames that I don't want to clean up sometimes they're broken and they're not really in the best condition but those are the best frames you put those in the starter in the in your swarm traps because they've got the Pro Plus on them they smell I can be hot so it's an attractant factor and it gives me some use out of some old junk equipment that I normally wouldn't use as far as bait goes I've used I've used everything you can think of the best thing that I have found if you're going to use lemongrass hole is you take a q-tip and you dip it in the lemongrass hole rub it across two or three the tops of two or three frames inside the box dip the q-tip back in the lemongrass hole make a circle around the entrance with the lemongrass oil dip the q-tip back in the lemongrass all the third time and just drop it into the bottom of the hop that has worked the best for me as far as lemongrass oil now I don't think you need food-grade lemongrass oil like some people recommend I go to Amazon and buy the son essentials brand and you can get a pretty good sized bottle for like 12 or 13 dollars and it works fine I've used lemongrass oil for years but last year I have another beekeeper who I helped get started catching swarm traps or catching swarms with swarm traps and he bought swarm commander and he made a believer out of me with swarm commander I swear I think you can spray swarm commander on a stick and throw it in your yard and bees would would cluster on that stick it's that good I don't know what it is about it so this year I bought some swarm commander and that's what I'm gonna use this year is it required no as far as swarms cult you know I had more swarm traps out than he did and I I still caught plenty of swarms but the amount of attractiveness that swarm commander pulled to his boxes was just unbelievable and he caught some really big swarms so I'm gonna go with the swarm commander and swarm commander you can buy it in these little spray bottles which is really really nice you don't have to keep up with q-tips and all that you can just spray I think it says two to three sprays on your inner cover I'm gonna put it two to three sprays on my top on the top of my top bars because I don't have an inner cover and you can put one to two sprays at the entrance very very simple as far as hanging swarm traps go I've hung them several different ways as well some people put them on on top of their tree stands like I said I bought I built some hangers at one time and it was basically a two before that set like this and another two before that set about like this and then I had a 45 piece that went in between them and those worked really really well on this vertical piece I would put a I would put me a screw through here and a couple down here below and it would it would hold very very well and then wrap it up I have also went to Lowe's or even go to Home Depot or any hardware store and bought the closet shelving brackets in the little 90 degree angle metal brackets I've used those nailed those in the tree the only problem I have with those is if you're going to use those for a also saw the bottom you probably need two of them because it's only about an inch or two wide and you've got a hob that is if it's a swarm trap that's probably anywhere from nine inches wide to a full-sized hive being 16 and it's hard to get that balance you really need a strap around the box and around the tree and just use that bracket to support the weight but you'll need to strap it really good but what they do work oh and I've also had the the stick that goes up the back you'll see those on some of my old videos and those work really good too the key there don't nail them if you're gonna put a strip of wood up the back that's a lot of weight on that swarm trap pulling forward and sometimes they will come loose put your strip of wood on the back a heavy beat of glue and make sure you screw that strip to that box where it will not come off another thing with those if you use those don't put one nail or one screw through that strip into the tree because if you do when the wind blows it'll rock back and forth like a second hand on a clock or one of the old grandfather clocks you need two screws that way it won't try to help prevent that thing from from swinging back and forth so those are some things that I've done in the past they all work really really great but this year I haven't developed or I haven't developed it but that's what I'm using is a French cleat style hanger I think there'll be a little bit easier as far as taking them off sometimes whenever you're setting those traps it's kind of hard to reach up over the trap and and run a screw through that little hanger when you're ten foot up in the air and the little the little metal things you know sometimes it's hard if you're taking or the wooden hangers for that matter taking screws out of the bottom and unstrapping it it's kind of hard to do so the way this French cleat style hanger works is you I took a two before and if you take this two before and divided into into four quadrants I just took out one of the quadrants so it basically notched it out I'd run it on a on a table saw I run it flat ways and made a groove along the bottom then flipped it up and then made another groove and just cut this little notch out took no time I got five eight foot two befores and made five five sets of French cleats or ten sets of French pleats so you have this knotch what you do is this opening will face the tree so say this is the tree or the fence post or the building or the light pole whatever you decide to put these home it would be here you put the you anchor the French cleat the hanger part of the French cleat to the tree on this way as you can see on the hive the hive you have the gap towards the hive so it would be like this so if the hive was on this side of the tree was on this side you just set the hive on that French cleat and it will and it'll hold it in place that's what I've done you can make this out of some thinner wood but I've really tried to build these swarm traps toward that will last me for a long time because they take time to make they take money to make and it's kind of bad whenever you you spend a lot of time making them and you only get to use them for one year so this is treated to before and you could probably take some decking boards and do the same thing but I wanted something strong I wanted something big and I wanted something that would last and treat it to before should last me for quite a while so that's how I've made my French cleat hangers so why do you so you probably want to know what makes a bee choose a storm trap well there's a couple different things other than the bait you have the comb in there that's nice that's a good start that's a head start to a hive so that's a good lure the swarm commander pulls them in but what makes them actually decide to move well there's a couple key things that that I've discovered over the years and that I've heard about and that I've studied about and one of them is size so when I talk about using newt boxes and I say that they catch small swarms well yeah you can use the nuke box there's a lot of people use newt boxes to catch swarms but they generally catch small swarms but then when you see people using ten frame hives yeah people put a 10 frame hive in a box and they catch some small swarms too but they also catch big swarms so space is a big deal I think it's a lot bigger deal than people think dr. Leo talks about his ideal space which is around us I think if he says 40 to 60 liters which is bigger than the 30 meter trap that I used to use which is why that I've went to his traps I'm gonna try them out and I think he's right I think you need a cavity that is about the size of a 10 frame brood box I think that's around the ideal size you want that size if so hanging a 10 frame hive would work or any swarm trap that is basically the size of a 10 frame brood chamber I think that is ideal so that's number one space is is number one another thing is no holes one thing that we learned last year when we had the disaster with our wet weather and all the wood bowing and cracking if Scout leaves are checking out a box and it has cracks in it and holes in it there's almost no chance that they're gonna choose that swarm trap they'll mess with it for a day or two and then they'll never move in so that was one of my big reasons for doing what I did this year I did dr. Leos hives on when he tells you to take the the three pieces on the outside and put those together I did that and wear those to where the bottom has screwed to the sides I used two and a half inch deck screws and a heavy bead of glue and just glued and screwed that as tight as I could so it will not come loose I rabbited the tops for my frame rest to sit in and then whenever I put my face on he calls for quarter-inch plywood I was able to get I believe half-inch plywood for cheaper is either 1/2 inch or 3/8 one of the two I could get for cheaper I bought that I put a heavy B to glue all the way around and I use 7/16 crown staples one and a half inches long and I put five five down this side five down this side and three across at the bottom with that glue so I sealed those boxes as good as I could possibly seal them and then I put two coats of exterior paint on the outside so you know I try to tell people if you were going to buy a house and you walked into the house and there was a big hole in the roof and there was holes in the walls would you buy that house and the answer is absolutely not you're not gonna buy a house that's got holes in the roof and holes in the walls because that will let in the elements and the bees are the same way they're looking for a secure place to live they're looking for a secure place to go and they're looking for a place that's big enough for the swarm so if you have a little tiny swarm trap and there's a really big swarm hanging in a tree limb they're not gonna move into that little box I've heard that the bees go in the swarm trap and they go around the outside and it's kind of like they measure the inside of the box to make sure that it's big enough so you know kind of like us if you've got five kids and in Hawaii and two dogs you're not gonna buy a two-bedroom two-bathroom house you're gonna have to have a bigger house and you're gonna use what you what you can so if there's nothing else out there available then yeah I'm sure that the bees will will go in your little nuke box but like I mentioned earlier within a week or so they'll fill that box out nur : so you're not going to keep them very long they need a good secure airtight place with no holes no daylight coming through and they also need they need enough space and a big enough space for the for the box so those are a few pointers that will help you along the way and help make your swarm catches a lot more successful okay so here's the tree that I've chose it's a pretty straight tree you know I've already mentioned that I like my hives facing south I want them eight to ten foot up in the air one of the things that you have to look for that that I'm particular about is a straight tree you really need a straight tree another key to swarm traps into making this thing successful and enjoyable is having a straight tree well why is that well bees generally used gravity to draw their combs down because they cluster and they hang on on the bottom of that frame and they draw their comb down if your box is setting out of plumb then what happens is when they hang in cluster they'll draw the comb from say frame three to frame two and from frame four to frame three and it creates a mess and so then when you open the swarm trap up and to get that swarm out that you're so excited about you end up with a nightmare you end up with combs that are all crossed up and it's or you know if you don't put your piece of comb in the center then they start building their combs kind of off-center on the frame so if you got the frame and the bottom the comb won't be centered in in that frame it'll be offset so it will be sticking out on one side and so that just makes for a nightmare so you need a straight tree you need a tree that now when you mount that hive to it it is plum or close to plum and you can take some pieces of wood or some sticks I do that a lot dig around the bottom of the tree find some sticks and I'll pull the bottom of the swarm trap out and shove a stick under the bottom of it but this is a good straight tree it's tall this direction towards the field is the south direction so we're going to have it facing south and I'm six foot tall and I want the entrance to be up above this knot here so if I'm six foot tall and entrances up here above this knot it should be close to eight foot up in the air all right so I've made a made a mark on the tree here I've got my French cleat as you can see here's the here's the notch I'm gonna have it facing the tree and I've got some screws here some 3-inch exterior the exterior deck screws I'm gonna screw this to the tree first you now like I said you want this box to be plumb but you also want it to be level so it needs to be plumb this way but it also needs to be level on the side-to-side direction too so in order to get it level I'm going to check this hanger with the level so that's three three three inch screws through the bottom of this thing and it's on there it's on there pretty good it'll hold us warm traffic all right so let's bait the swarm trap here I told you guys I'm going with swarm commander this year so here's my bottle of swarm commander we're gonna give it one two sprays on the top bars and that's it more is not better when it comes to lure okay more is a turn-off so do what the instructions say or do what I said with the q-tip don't just pour it in now that we got that done you got it baited on the inside we're gonna put our feed sack on top put our lid on top of that now one thing that you'll see that I didn't mention earlier is I got a two before block right here the reason that I have that is these boxes that I built are big and they're heavy and so when you hang this swarm trap by this French cleat this bottom is going to have a tendency to pull back towards the tree so by putting this two before block here it's the same width as this cleat here it'll hold it'll hold this trap off the tree plumb and give this bottom a little bit more support and not be so much strain on my French cleat help it last a little bit longer all right let's hang it up all right so if you look at the storm trap from this angle it's it's pretty good and plumb French cleat isn't wanting to seat as well as I'd like for it to and it's kind of hard to see but on this tree there's a little bit of a bow and up towards the tree up towards the top of the swarm trap it's kind of bowing out the tree is and that's kind of preventing the French cleat from sitting down but it's still in there pretty solid and here's the view from out front as you can see the trap is level and that's what we're looking for now since I'm using a a telescoping lid and not a lid like my old plans where the lid is actually nailed down this is a telescoping lid so it can blow off the last thing I do is I use a ratchet strap to wrap a strap around the trap to hold the lid on I used to put a rock on top of the lid but that's kind of hard to do and fine and then always I'm always afraid somebody's gonna be down here messing around near the trap and the rocks gonna fall off and hit them in the head which is would not be good so I just use the ratchet straps any excessive strap I just tied on the on the back here and the last thing you do before you leave the swarm trap you got to spray your bait or your lure on the entrance all right so here's another hive that I've got hung up bait hive swarm trap whatever you want to call it this one is in a persimmon tree and as you can see this one I've got a strap around it and as I mentioned before something get to focus here sometimes I use these little brackets that you use to put closet shelving in with and I've just got that nailed to the tree I've got the storm trap sitting fell in a hole got that swarm trap setting on top of that box so that supports the weight and then I've just got a strap wrapped around the tree and around the storm trap to actually hold it in place keep it pulled tight now the reason why you don't see a strap around to hold the top on if you look on the top there is a limb that I've cut off year two ago and it is actually right above that top and I've kind of got the box wedged between the closet shelving bracket hanger and that limb so the lid can't not blow off the trap and it is securely on there now as far as location go let's look at the location of this storm trap so the location of this swarm trap is right on a roadway it's in my front yard you can see little pile of persimmon trees there and the swarm traps hanging in the persimmons right right up that ditch line is my driveway and this is the the road that I live on so like I said earlier bees I believe and I've heard you know read research that that they do follow landmarks being landmarks so they'll follow tree lines and they follow roadways and power lines and and fence rows and and things like that so if that's true then placing swarm traps on those areas those big key landmarks so that will make it easy for them to find because they'll be using those landmarks as travel corridors and orientation places to find their way back home and as they're flying through there they're gonna smell your swarm commander and if if a swarm is out there in a tree and they're sending Scouts out to find a place to go and they're flying those those flight ways the tree lines and all that stuff then as they're flying through they're scouting for places they're going to find you're they're gonna smell that swarm commander they're gonna go in there and check out your box and you're gonna catch a swarm alright so in my video swarm in swarm trap late summer I had a swarm trap in this maple tree right here and when I found this swarm it was late summarize actually in the process of moving most of my bees back here to the farm instead of taking them away from the farm to mating yards like I normally do so I never moved this swarm this swarm I just basically took the swarm trap down put them right here at the bottom of the tree and I left them there and did a video that you can go back and look at the video I've still alive they're doing okay not the strongest box I've got but it's a box of bees nonetheless so one of the places I like to set swarm traps is a place where I've caught swarms before quite frankly that's probably the best place to hang storms or hang swarm traps or bait hives if you've called swarms there before then generally you will catch them there again a lot of times if I hang a bait hive or a swarm trap whatever you want to call it generally if I hang a swarm trap in a spot and I catch an early swarm I will take that swarm trap down and move that hive over the next day I will come back I will hang another form trap in the exact same spot and a lot of times I will catch another swarm in the same tree I don't want to put the swarm trap in this exact tree because I still have this hive here and I don't know what I'm going to move in so I'm just going to go right down there about I don't know 20 feet maybe 30 feet and I'm gonna put my swarm trap in that persimmon tree now I'll go over a little bit more of what you do after you catch swarm traps later on I'll just wait until we actually catch one then I'll do a video on that [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] all right so there it is doesn't take very long you got it level that way one thing I have noticed is my friend's cleats are not working exactly like I wanted them to you can see kind of how they're not locking in it's locked in enough to hold it let me have to go back to the drawing board on that one thing that I have done though to give it a little bit of added support is whenever I take the strap over the top of the swarm trap I go actually around the tree and then whenever I ratchet that around the tree it gives it a little bit more support kind of pulls that swarm trap tight against the tree pulls the swarm trap tight against the tree and helps lock it in place that one I've got hooked around the knot I will adjust that but that storm trap is not going anywhere it's got like I've told you before three three inch screws holding that bottom two before on its treated and the two two before is there they're locking together it's a probably easier if I was putting it on a building or something flat but when you're working with trees and Mother Nature don't always go the way you want it to all right if you've watched my video last year kellton coldest first swarm I think that's the title of it this is the tree right here this is where we caught that swarm that's where I'm gonna hang a swarm trap just for the record the swarm that killed and caught last year is still alive I made a split from it yesterday which is would have been March 27th so it's doing really really well we're on the fence right so like I said I got a I got one of my pastures is right here to my right it's a nine-acre [Music] [Music] [Music] all right so remember like I see it I'm six foot tall how's that for a purse warm trap hi that's just like a hung it last year entrances shoulder-high called a great swarm so you know take everything you say with a grain of salt if you don't want to get up on the ladder don't get up on the ladder you can hang them load basil still move in them my first two swarms I caught with trap well they weren't traps they were hive sitting on the ground so this'll work and that's pretty much it if you have any questions leave them in the description below I'll try to answer them the best in a can I've went over how I come about swarm traps just stumbling across it by being too lazy to clean my own hives how I started using nukes moving to full-size hives then I went to the 30 liter trap again plans are in the description wonderful trap great trap you can make tons of those traps with a plywood I just I would make sure I put a good lid on them and then on the doctor Leo's traps which is I'm trying this year one thing that I didn't go over though it's the entrance hole the entrance hole on the traps from the 30 liter trap for inch-and-a-quarter dr. Leo uses a slit I believe it's a half inch by two inches you can look at that I like dr. Leo's entrance a lot better the 30 liter trap they talk about the inch and a quarter hole the problem being that birds will fly in through it and you have to shoot a staple up through it or staple a piece of wire across it to keep the birds out because they will get in it but Locker Leo uses the slit I was just not feeling like I wanted to put the dado blades on the table saw so what I'm trying to do this year it's another one of my experiments is I'm just using a 3/4 inch hole and the reason why one I don't think birds embedded get in a 3/4 inch hole and two it's just a lot smaller hole and I feel like the bees will find that more secure now some people disagree with that some people will say that they feel they'll feel like there's not enough room for them to go in and out of but I have seen the last cut our trap outs that I did was in a center block garage and basically there was a small piece of the bed joint of a cinder block missing and the bees were going in and out of that bed joint and the bed joint on a block is not very big I've also seen bees going in the roofs of houses under a shingle that was the nail roofing nail had just pushed the shingle up just enough for the bees could slide through there I've seen them go through a little you know we're a pipe or for electronics or plumbing go into a building and they didn't get it all the way sealed up with great stuff foam or silicone I've seen them go through that so me personally I don't think the bees are gonna really care whether or not that hole is an inch and a quarter or three-quarters if you look at my my last swarm trap video it was a swarm swarm in a swarm trap late summer and I talked about a swarm in July let it fly and we don't do that around here well if you look on that one there was something on the on the entrance and I couldn't figure out what it was and basically that inch and a 3/4 hole and the bees had just propyl eyes it almost completely shut they had you know just enough room for maybe two or three beans to get through and that was it so that's one of the things I know I forgot to mention and I mentioned it here the entrance hole I'm using a 3/4 I think dr. leo uses a half an inch wide by two inches or it's a half inch tall by two inches long hole that's what he likes the old traps that I used inch and inch and a quarter that's what that's what they like I'm gonna try 3/4 inches but uh if you have any questions like say comments and put some comments below and I'll do the best I can to answer them and good luck [Music] you

Channel: Brown's Beef and Bees

Views: 421,587

Rating: 4.8410058 out of 5

Keywords: Swarm Trap, Bait Hive, Swarms, Honeybees, Free Bees, Lemongrass Oil, Swarm Commander

Id: STvW6pb1j68

Length: 48min 15sec (2895 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 02 2018