The Bait Hive

Written May 25th.

As I mentioned, Hive 2 has been a problem with numerous drone cells, an invisible queen, a couple of now gone supercedure cells and finally some swarm cells. About 2 hours after closing up the hive I noticed a lot of bearding on the front of the hive (pic 1). As I am writing this at 37,000 feet over the Atlantic on my way to a site survey in Barcelona, I was immediately concerned that the bees may swarm while I’m away. The only thing I could think of was to put out a couple of bait hives.

A bait hive is just what it sounds like. It is intended to attract scout bees looking for a place to relocate a swarm. Usually, it’s best to take an old hive or nuc, put in some drawn comb that has previously had brood in it, add swarm lure and place it 10’-15’up on a tree about 50 yards from the hive. When a hive prepares to swarm, scouts are sent out to find a new home for the queen so they can quickly re-establish the colony. As they tend to like areas about 1 cubic foot, a nuc box is great to use.

In my case, I only have 2 new nuc boxes, a medium and a deep, 5 frames of half drawn medium frames and some new deep frames. I prepared the 2 boxes, adding 2 drops of lemongrass oil to each frame and a couple of additional drops at the entrance. I put the medium on our pool deck fence about 12’ off the ground (pic 2). The deep I put out next to the woods on an old stump (pic 3). Within minutes, each had a honeybee checking it out!

The bees stayed out on their front porch all evening, even after it really cooled off. After really looking at the pictures I took, I noticed the bees were not all facing the entrance so maybe they aren’t thinking about swarming. But this is my Russian hive that swarmed last year and I just want to make sure I have a good chance of catching the swarm if it happens while I’m drinking sangria and eating tapas in Spain. Oh, yeah. And doing the site survey!



Update: Just got back and the bees did not swarm. It was rainy and cold until today and the bees seemed to have mellowed out. BTW, even tho’ the sangria was good, the piaya was excellent and working with friends was the best! Thanks to Lara, Stefan, Gaby and Frank for a great trip!