I went out to the trap shed to work on some traps. There bee traps that I need to get loaded up with frames and foundation. Plan on getting them hung on the front end of swarm season this year, instead of end of season like last year. Need to catch about 25 swarm’s to fill up the hives I built last year. Only caught two swarms last year and they are still kicking going into this year. Pretty impressive creatures.

Seems like a pretty good way to extend trapping season to me.

You selling the swarms or keeping them? Somebody near you was selling honey at Peter's Market. You or somebody else?

Keeping them for now. Got room for 25 or 30 separate swarms. Plan on building another 10-12 long hives this summer. Want to get up to 50 or so hives. That should be enough to keep an eye on. Trapping bees is like trapping other critters. You make your set then check it every few days and hope you catch something. Little learning curve to it just like regular critter trapping. Could spend 200$ a pop buying bees like most people do. But you miss out on the fun of trapping them. Plus I’m catching local wild survivor bees that are untreated.
Not selling any honey yet, but maybe this year will have some extra. Will probably take me a couple more years to get into production enough to market.

What are the frame dimensions? Those don/t appear standard size to me. keeping bees is addictive forsure.

Back many years ago when we sold off our primary bee operation my dad started putting out swarm traps as a new hobby. What that actually meant was me crawling into some tree to hang them for him lol. Growing up we, like most every commercial beekeeper in these parts, never even slowed the truck down to look at a swarm. Too little time in the day that was better invested in managing colonies. But in retirement he said his new hobby reminded him of the fun from the old days of checking a trap line. Maybe at some future date when I sell off the colonies I currently keep I will make swarm trapping my new hobby.

I’m running Layens insulated hives Drifter. All of them are horizontal hives holding from 14 frames max up to 33 frames max. The frames are not as wide as Langstroph frames but they are almost twice as deep. The swarm traps are 6 frames and added some extra open space at the bottom to get them to around 50 liters. Big enough to entice a monster primary swarm but not too big for secondary swarm’s. I think they’re gonna work well but I ain’t no expert at it.
Too dang old to climb up a ladder wrestling around these suckers, so how ever high I can reach off the ground is where they’re going. Only had 5 smaller (40 liter) boxes I used last year at tail end of season. Didn’t get very good results until I started using some Swarm Commander to bait with. Made 20 more bigger traps later that summer. Hope too catch at least 25 swarms this year. Something to do and keeps me out of the bars and chasing women.

Is all that wood OSB? I heard that OSB can leach toxins into your honey and make folks sick or dead! And PT lumber can kill the bee's too.

Good luck and the keep us posted. seeing a few bees here but not ran across any swarms yet.

No OSB chip board in these or the hives I built. All plywood and non treated lumber. More worried about chemicals from crop land and the peach and apple orchards surrounding me killing the bees.

I’m guessing you’re probably a month or more ahead of us Drifter. Have got notified that some swarming has started in Florida and Texas already. Just getting stuff ready but probably won’t hang any until middle of March unless we get an early spring.

No blooming here as yet. Bradford pear is our early thing. see way more mason and leafcutters when starts.

When lived in Illinois Burlington Iowa kept numbers for swarm collectors.Worked well until some dill weed started buying the swarms.