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  • From: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
  • To: mark powers <markapowers53 AT gmail.com>, Rob Cook <crookkohler AT bellsouth.net>
  • Cc: Orange County Beekeepers Association <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Swarm above my house
  • Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2017 14:33:09 -0400

Re: "Swarm traps are more likely to be successful if at least 300 ft from the prior hive": yes, "AT LEAST" is the key point.

Look at it this way: Say you are the village blacksmith. You raise your child to be a blacksmith just like you. When the child comes of age, what happens if they don't want to stay home and work in the family's shop? Is it best for your child to set up a shop right next door to yours? Absolutely not. There isn't hardly enough business in the village to support you anyway, and you don't want to compete with somebody else. The best thing is for your child to move away to another village. It doesn't have to be too far away, just far enough to where you aren't competing for the exact same business.

Honey bees have been issuing reproductive swarms for millions of years, long enough to figure out what the blacksmith knows. So from a bee sociology standpoint, swarms must travel a fair distance away from the mother hive before setting up shop. Maple trees "know" this too -- that's why they have those helicopter thingees on their seeds to carry them away from the mother tree, and why dandelion seeds waft on the wind, carried by those little bits of fluff.

Never say never with honey bees, but the best swarm traps to catch YOUR swarms are going to be away from your hives, say 1/4 mile or so in each direction. I KNOW there are folks who have caught there own swarms in their own yards with their own swarm traps -- there's no need to reply as rebuttal to the innate biological tendency for bee swarms to take off for new pastures. Those examples just go to show that Walter (and Pooh) is right, "You never can tell with bees."

Adding to the argument that own-yard swarm traps aren't supposed to work (but sometimes do) is the fact that honey bees begin scouting for new locations many days before they actually take off. So if you put out a swarm trap because a colony just swarmed, that's after they've already decided where to go. Note that the first swarm cluster, the one that's 40 feet in the top of your tree, is only an initial staging area. It is like, "Hey everybody, let's meet in the parking lot before we all go to the game." Once the cluster is assembled and everybody is present (especially the queen), they take off to the secondary staging area. This can be a long distance away. Once in the secondary cluster, they scout for a new home. So unless they are abnormal and linger in the first staging area for a very long time, they aren't scouting for a home at that point.

All that said, you may as well give it a shot, because if you've got dumb bees (as many of us have), they may move into that swarm trap you've put out. If it only works 1% of the time, at least you'll get those 1%.

Randall Austin


On 4/12/2017 1:21 PM, mark powers wrote:
57C4BAC6-01ED-41A8-9AFF-536E9D5B49C7 AT gmail.com">
That's probably better than close to the old hive.  Swarm traps are more likely to be successful if at least 300 ft from the prior hive, I believe.

Sent from my iPad

On Apr 12, 2017, at 11:16 AM, Rob Cook <crookkohler AT bellsouth.net> wrote:

So it has been an interesting morning with a swarm leaving my hive and then resting in a pine branch 40 feet in the air. I have queen pheromone on a cotton ball in an empty hive next to the hive where they swarmed from. I have taken out the entrance reducer added a fresh dose of queen pheromone.

Any ideas on how to get this swarm back into one of my hive boxes? I really liked the queen it was a very mellow hive.

Should I move the empty hive super to directly below this swarm to get it closer to them?

Rob Crook
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