admanga
New Bee
- Joined
- May 20, 2024
- Messages
- 35
- Reaction score
- 19
- Location
- Grenoble
- Hive Type
- warre
- Number of Hives
- 1
I put out three hives as swarm traps in June, two double Warre's and one Dadant 10 brood box. For lack of spares, I took back the crown board from the Dadant to use elsewhere. As luck would have it, a swarm was caught by the Dadant sometime between 7 and 20 July.
The swarm trap that worked was facing south, in half shade, at a height of about 1m30, perched in the window space of an abandoned shed. It contained 5 frames, one of drawn comb, four of foundation, one end frame replaced by a block of insulation (because I believe a D10 is much too big). I left an empty space in the middle, in the belief that scouts are attracted to a large volume. I used lemon grass oil as bait. I had put cardboard over the ventilated floor grill. I put an old piece of metal sheet and a branch on top to provide some shade.
The caught bees look like Buckfast and were very passive during my first look inside. And I gave them plenty of reasons to get angry, unfortunately. They have build two natural comb from the roof rather than build out the foundation.
One very large comb broke off from the roof, but remained between frames, fixed to the sides of the brood chamber, while the other was glued to the roof and I cut that off and placed between frames. A small part was lost, which I examined afterwards and saw young brood. My old eyes did not notice this while the hive was open. Good news that the queen is laying.
I closed up the box with a recovered crown board and its roof.
I suspect that if I leave the bees for too long, the wild comb will only get more difficult to deal with. The next thing to do is to go back into the hive, extract the large comb that is fixed at the sides and place it in an empty frame (masking tape or wire). And then feed the swarm syrup to get it through an expected dearth of nectar in August and promote laying. Is that a reasonable approach?
Despite being caught in July, this swarm is valuable. If the hive does not reach a good size before winter then I would merge it with another which started from a five-frame nucleus in June (swarm from May), currently also in Dadant.
The swarm trap that worked was facing south, in half shade, at a height of about 1m30, perched in the window space of an abandoned shed. It contained 5 frames, one of drawn comb, four of foundation, one end frame replaced by a block of insulation (because I believe a D10 is much too big). I left an empty space in the middle, in the belief that scouts are attracted to a large volume. I used lemon grass oil as bait. I had put cardboard over the ventilated floor grill. I put an old piece of metal sheet and a branch on top to provide some shade.
The caught bees look like Buckfast and were very passive during my first look inside. And I gave them plenty of reasons to get angry, unfortunately. They have build two natural comb from the roof rather than build out the foundation.
One very large comb broke off from the roof, but remained between frames, fixed to the sides of the brood chamber, while the other was glued to the roof and I cut that off and placed between frames. A small part was lost, which I examined afterwards and saw young brood. My old eyes did not notice this while the hive was open. Good news that the queen is laying.
I closed up the box with a recovered crown board and its roof.
I suspect that if I leave the bees for too long, the wild comb will only get more difficult to deal with. The next thing to do is to go back into the hive, extract the large comb that is fixed at the sides and place it in an empty frame (masking tape or wire). And then feed the swarm syrup to get it through an expected dearth of nectar in August and promote laying. Is that a reasonable approach?
Despite being caught in July, this swarm is valuable. If the hive does not reach a good size before winter then I would merge it with another which started from a five-frame nucleus in June (swarm from May), currently also in Dadant.