Whoopie! Just caught our very first swarm!

Just a note... you want to be careful not to overdo the lure or lemongrass... Too much might attract lookers, but will overpower them when they're inside and they won't stay. Kinda like a woman with too much perfume (or guy w/cologn)... she (he) sure smells great while outside the restaurant, but once inside in a confined area, it gets very hard to breath.

Latestarter - you always crack me up!

Latestarter, I love your analogies...helps us all understand things more clearly...

And yes, I think I may have overdosed on the lemon grass rubbing on the inside of the hives...

Next time I will not rub lemon grass. but, rather, limit the attractant to only the Swarm Commander Swarm Lure, old black comb, and some bees glue [Propolis ] and wax...

BTW, finished the third swarm trap last night, but haven't had the time to mount it up in the tree yet...hopefully this weekend!

soarwitheagles said:

Happy Chooks,

The flow here has been extremely dismal here due to the drought. But two years ago, we saw a massive eucalyptus bloom and now we realize it only occurs every two years...so we would like to make the most of this massive flow.

I fed my hives nearly all of last year. It was either feed them or watch them die...

This year has been completely different. Massive flow even before the eucalyptus started blooming. So this is very good news.

Now I only wish I had made many more swarm traps and set them. Today I made another swarm trap and two more ant proof bee hive stands.

I hope to set some more swarm traps tomorrow and in the next few days.

I would like to make 5-10 traps. We are up to two traps now.

I am posting pics of the two new ant proof stands...minus the inverted PVC caps with the high temp lube. Hope to put those on tomorrow.

Have a great day!

Soar

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I know nothing about bee keeping but I like to build stuff. My thought when I saw your "ant proof" stands was "great idea, adjustable posts for leveling the hive rather than having to carefully level the ground". Looks like I jumped to conclusions but if you used threaded iron pipe and captive nuts top or bottom, they would be "levelable"


If the Eucalyptus (learned to spell that over 50 years ago when we went to my grandparents house in Chino, their farm was on Eucalyptus) blooms only every other year, will you end up feeding a TON of hives next year and the following winter??

Bruce said:

I know nothing about bee keeping but I like to build stuff. My thought when I saw your "ant proof" stands was "great idea, adjustable posts for leveling the hive rather than having to carefully level the ground". Looks like I jumped to conclusions but if you used threaded iron pipe and captive nuts top or bottom, they would be "levelable"


If the Eucalyptus (learned to spell that over 50 years ago when we went to my grandparents house in Chino, their farm was on Eucalyptus) blooms only every other year, will you end up feeding a TON of hives next year and the following winter??

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Bruce,

Thank you for your post!

Yes, that would definitely make the ant proof hive “level-able” and I like your idea very, very much! For me, right now, I do not have the extra time or $$$ required to make such a beautiful and custom and adjustable ant-proof beehive stand. But I like your idea and I feel it would be a much better design!

If the Eucalyptus (learned to spell that over 50 years ago when we went to my grandparents house in Chino, their farm was on Eucalyptus) blooms only every other year, will you end up feeding a TON of hives next year and the following winter??


Very, very good point! Yes, the last time this Eucalyptus grove bloomed was two years ago…and it was a massive bloom. We are still waiting for the two year bloom to come in. Presently, the Eucalyptus trees just began to bloom about 3 weeks ago, but it is no where near the full massive bloom we saw two years ago.

Last year was one of the driest years in written history in this part of California and we were still in the midst of the greatest drought in recorded history. Did I feed our hives? Heck yes! My friend did not feed his and he lost 35 hives out of 70. We fed sugar syrup to one starter hive since day one at the advice of Dr. Randy Oliver. Fed the split hive that came from that hive sugar syrup too. Both hives received sugar syrup all summer long. We also had to feed them some pollen substitutes.

Randy's website is here:

http://scientificbeekeeping.com/

Since last October, we stopped all feeding. The rain has caused a wonderful flow and the bees are thriving now.

Thinking about moving the hives to my parents in the Bay Area and our cabin up near Jackson for the summer months if there is another dearth. Still checking into various options. I do not want to feed them anymore if I do not have to. It is way too time comsuming and way too expensive. There is always something blooming in the Bay Area [Silicon Valley], due to all the super high tech landscaping and the Mediterranean like weather...

What is strange is there is at least some Eucayptus flow every year, but the massive flows supposedly occur every two years...

Hope this helps!

BTW,

Assembled and set three full swarm hive traps and in the last two weeks we have captured….nada! Zero!

We may have waited too late!!!

Not sure about CA specifically, but from what I understand, the prime swarm time is from the end of April through the end of June. Any swarms after that will have an increasingly difficult time getting established as it takes ~21 days for new brood to hatch and that's just about the start of the late summer dearth. Then there's a short fall flow, then nothing, so the swarm normally doesn't have time to store enough for the winter.

Good luck in catching some more swarms. You know, as has been noted, the eucalyptus flow won't be there next year... In the spring, you could start splitting all your hives into nucs, and advertise them for sale. Here a nuc goes for around $150. You can buy those cardboard nuc boxes for cheap.

The first swarm I've heard about in my area was 2 weeks ago. They were able to catch it.

Latestarter said:

Not sure about CA specifically, but from what I understand, the prime swarm time is from the end of April through the end of June. Any swarms after that will have an increasingly difficult time getting established as it takes ~21 days for new brood to hatch and that's just about the start of the late summer dearth. Then there's a short fall flow, then nothing, so the swarm normally doesn't have time to store enough for the winter.

Good luck in catching some more swarms. You know, as has been noted, the eucalyptus flow won't be there next year... In the spring, you could start splitting all your hives into nucs, and advertise them for sale. Here a nuc goes for around $150. You can buy those cardboard nuc boxes for cheap.

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LS,

Thanks for your post. In the near by Bay Area, people have been catching swarms by the dozens since February. So I think location has a lot to do with it. I like your idea about starting nucs. I have been thinking about it for some time now. Recently I purchased a queen making kit that enables us to produce 100 new queens. So I hope to try my hand at queen rearing...

Also found a large stack of like new pine wood already cut up that a beehive box maker gave us for free last year. So I now realize I have everything I need to make 20 or more nucs right here in front of me. It is already routered too. I would not be comfortable using the cardboard box versions...

Keep checking our swarm traps and still no sweetness! Auuggh!

Happy Chooks said:

The first swarm I've heard about in my area was 2 weeks ago. They were able to catch it.

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Hoping for more swarms real quick here HC. Haven't even seen any scouts visiting our traps though...

I haven't seen any scouts in mine either. I'm going to go this week and refresh the lemongrass oil.

Well, let's just keep believing that we will experience more of the miracles of catching nice bee swarms!