Honey bee bait hive

I tried to attract a swarm before I actually had any bees of my own by using lemon grass oil but failed miserably. I didn't have the materials required to attract a swarm. Ideally a bait hive will be an old bee box in which bees have lived previously, it will therefore have propolis and bees wax impregnated into the wood and some old comb.

Results can be improved by using a pheromone attractant, these are available commercially but if you keep bees already they can be prepared yourself: Any one that has a number of hives will have the the  opportunity to evaluate the colonies and differentiate between their traits, if there are colonies that display undesirable traits, be it temper, chalk brood or just not building up as desired, or whatever, has the option to re-queen using eggs or larvae from their other colonies. This requires the removal of the old queen. These can be discarded, or more favourably, they can be used to progress your beekeeping. After dispatching the unwanted, queen she should be deposited in a bottle of alcohol or similar solvent and any other such queens should be added along with any unwanted virgin queens. The resultant tincture is the daubed onto the wood work of the bait hive. This is an excellent swarm attractant!

Queens in alcohol

A farming family attended our branch meeting a couple of years ago, looking to have some bees on their farm. I contacted them and arranged to meet and discuss placing a number of hives there. They showed me around their farm, which was very interesting, they have robots that milk their cows on demand. If you ever get the chance to visit a similar dairy farm you should jump at the opportunity it's fascinating. We eventually chose a suitable site, surrounded on three sides by a small wood, the open side being south facing. Shortly after I placed a couple of nucs there and left them to overwinter. On my second visit I noticed that there was a wild tree colony not thirty feet from my nucs. I had chosen a site that bees had decided was an ideal site too!

Wild tree bees

They were housed in a beech tree that had two trunks that had fused together and, presumably formed a cavity within. The overall girth the the tree isn't very wide so I concluded that the cavity isn't large and the bees would, next year, swarm at the earliest opportunity. I therefore decided to place a bait hive to catch any resultant swarm. I used two old brood combs, two foundation frames and a couple of drawn super frames, the remaining space being filled with foundation less frames along with some of my home made swarm attractant in a BS brood box. The  books say to place a bait hive over one hundred and fifty meters or more from their home hive but I didn't have that luxury, mine was placed just twenty meters away from the tree.  As we all know the bees don't read books so I was cautiously optimistic!

I called at the farm to inspect the nucs that I had placed there earlier last May, the farmer came out to greet me and said that the pest controller had called to deal with a mole infestation two days after my last visit and had pointed out a large swarm of bees flying over the wood where my bees were located. I was certain that any swarm was not from my nucs, they had plenty of room to grow and had newly matted queens heading them, it must be a swarm from the tree. Could they have taken the bait and moved into my hive?

Well, yes they did! There was a lot activity at the hive entrance, with bees coming and going and bringing in lots of pollen, this was a prime swarm headed by a mated queen. On inspection they had drawn out all eleven frames, there were four frames of brood and the rest was very light honey and nectar. I made a note to bring another brood box the following day to give them room to grow. I didn't take any honey from this colony but I will take some from this apiary in May this year if I can, the honey is much lighter in colour than from my existing apiaries. Instead I decided to propagate from these bees, the were very dark in colour but their abdomen banding is grey, indicating that they are Carniolan bees, not what I really want, as I am trying to breed Apis mellifera mellifera. They are however very good bees to work with, being very calm on the comb and as far as I can, tell produce a good honey crop. I will keep them separate from my queen breeding.

I used a Snelgrove board to rear queens from this swarm colony, this is the first time that I have used a Snelgrove board. I now have four daughter colonies from the swarm, two in five frame nucs and two in double five frame nucs. This is despite a ferocious attack from wasps at the end of last season, robbing out nucleus colonies. I shall write a page documenting using the Snelgrove board later this year. I found it easy to use and had very good results, they are easy to make from a crown board although I got mine from an association auction.

The Safest Way To Introduce A Queen

I don't usually have to introduce a queen to a colony of bees: By raising queens, most of my queens emerge into a queen less nucleus hive, made up specifically to enable the queen to be mated. I have though on occasion acquired a mated queen for the purposes of introducing desired genetic material to my breeding programme. These queens therefore are very valuable to me and I therefore want to minimise the likelihood of them being rejected by their new colony.

The first time that I attempted such an introduction was with an AMM queen that I had acquired in-order to evaluate and hoped that she would push forward my progress to breed British Native bees. I made up a nucleus colony of two frames of bees plus stores and introduced the queen in a queen introduction cage. I plugged the exit with candy to delay the release of the queen as is suggested and suspended the cage between the two brood frames. On inspection two days later the cage was empty, the queen having been released, happy days!

Queen cage

However, the following day I found a very sick looking queen on the ground below the entrance to the hive, she was easy to spot as she was marked. The only thing that I could think of to do was to place her back into the cage, with another plug of candy and try again. I checked for any queen cells and found none. Fingers crossed, this time she would be accepted.

No such luck I found her outside the hive three days later, this time she was dead.

If I was going to invest in new queens I needed to find a more reliable way to introduce them into a colony. I searched the web and found a number of pages referring to "push in cages", beekeeping suppliers such as Thornes stock these items (Link) but they are easy to make yourself and they will probably be better ......

They can be made from woven steel mesh (size: 8 mesh). , I found that this supplier (Link) offered "samples" in a size (Large Sample 300mm x 200mm, A4 sized) that enables two good sized cages to be made from one A4 sheet. These are stainless steel and therefore should last a lifetime or more if they are looked after. After use I place mine into the dish washer for a couple of cycles and they come out as new. Galvanised steel mesh would be cheaper though.

Using sharp wire cutters, divide the sheet into two. Then, on each long side make a cut 2cm deep, 2 cm from each end, (2cm is 7 wires). The two cm "edges" can then be folded over to produce a the desired shape, fold the corners and hold these secure by twisting wire through and snipping off the excess. The picture should make that easier to understand.

Queen push in cage

Having removed the queen from the colony to be re-queened, or a nuc made up specifically to receive the new queen,  leave them for eight or nine days. There will then be no larvae with which the bees can make a queen from for themselves, remove any emergency queen cells that they have started.
The introduction can then be carried out.

The idea is that a comb from this colony to be is selected that has emerging brood and some stores, honey and pollen. The comb is shaken or brushed free of bees and the new queen placed the comb, under the cage such that the queen has free run of the area within the cage. The cage should cover some stores and emerging brood. The cage is then pushed firmly into the comb, right to the midrib. This frame is then returned to to hive and left for five days.
During this time the emerging brood will be trapped in the cage with the new queen. They will feed from the available stores and be fed through the cage by their sisters, as the new queen is the only one they have ever known they will feed the new queen also. She will thus take on the scent of the colony and come back into lay, using the cells vacated by the emerging brood. A queen that has been caged and posted for example will shrink in size and stop laying, the bees will not accept her as readily if she doesn't smell like a laying queen.

Inspection after five days should show the queen and by now many nurse bees in the cage, the workers outside if the cage should show no aggression to the queen below, not clinging the the frame or tightly clustering on it. The queen will have laid into the vacant cells and these should be visible.

The cage can now be gently removed, the queen and her attendants will wander off onto the wider comb quite happily and the comb returned and the hive quietly closed up.

This method I have found to be completely reliable, never having a queen rejected.

I will update this page later this year with some pictures and/or a video showing the process.