Natural Beekeeping | Intro to Catching Wild Swarms (Vlog)
Flowers are blooming and the bees are buzzing. This means it's time to hang some swarm traps in hopes of catching wild or feral honeybees swarms.
Early this year, we set the goal to expand our natural apiary by building swarm traps and catching wild or feral honeybees.
We have followed through and built 5 swarm trap form locally milled cedar, and are excited to see if any bees choose to take up residence in these pretty little boxes. (Find the plans here:).
The basic concept is to attract scout bees as they are swarming and looking for a new home. We have baited the boxes with propolis and lemongrass oil in hopes of enticing them to take up residence. The tops of the frames are also primed with 1" of chemical-free wax to get to bees going in a straight line as they build their comb while still allowing them to choose the size of cell (crucial for allowing them to choose amount of drones, resulting in a more natural makeup of bee population). -- we'll write a full post on this process with picture detail!
The boxes use 7 Layens frames (most popular style in Europe) and are big enough to house a colony through its first year.
This is a style of horizontal hive that aligns with bee's natural tendencies and allows for easy management. It can also be attached together to create a 14 frame hive (typical of this area). The same box can also be later used to split and multiply colonies.
Hanging Swarm Traps
We've hung the first of 5 around 20 feet up a tree on our land.
We're gearing up to head off and hang the rest around our county. We are looking for easy to access trees (for us as well as bees) that are on the edges of fields and streams that would be a prime local for a swarm to find and inhabit. A large tree with few branches near water and forage is ideal, and a clear pathway is helpful. Forager bees also act as scouts (looking for new home) and they like open and clear flight paths.
Slow & Organic
We're building our natural apiary the slow and organic way by choosing healthy and vigorous wild or feral bee populations that won't require extensive management, feeding or medicating. This way we can have numerous colonies of thriving honey bees and keep them in as natural state as possible while still obtaining yields such as pollination for our crops, food, medicine and wax.
We'll keep ya'll posted as the season progresses and see what we can catch!
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Nice bee trap you got with hope you both reap success
With swarm trap great anyway
Thanks, we're happy with the progress so far.
Good for you both! I so would love to have a hive, but for now we plant tons of flowers for pollen and offer them a huge variety of food sources throughout the seasons. I can't wait to hear more on the subject. It seems a tad overwhelming to me to care for them.
See my comment. Someone might do that in your area? Bee rental is common here.
So glad you found this interesting. That's great you're into producing bee forage, that's a a great entry into bee keeping. There's a lot to bee keeping, but since we took the course on natural bee keeping, the amount of human inputs is less than we thought. Try looking up info on layerns horizontal hive, where the standard is no medication, no feeding and no heavy lifting, best of luck ;)
Thank you I will do that.... I have also been looking into the flo hive from Austailia and have been holding off. I really don't need another thing to take care of at this point as my husbands health is giving him many issues and I rely on him for help.
Great to catch-up with you two! Your bee boxes look awesome! Such nice cedarwood. I bet they smell divine. Best wishes for your growing apiary ❤❤❤
Thanks for touching base, good to hear from you. They turned out quite pretty and they do smell great especially due to propolis and lemongrass. The ethos of local resources more than makes up for the extra work (using factory farmed wood would be lighter, bigger and easier to build with). Thanks for the well wishes.
There's sure a lot to consider when doing what we do. Here's to hoping they are successful at attracting a colony looking for a home 🐝
Slow and organic it's kind of how we want to do things over at No Man's Land! I'm happy that we have @Bushkill in the area and will be able to learn tons on bees!!!
Thanks for the link to the plans on how to make the box and good luck and happy swarm catching to you guys!
Love it! The slow and organic method for sure leaves room for the ever present unknown beauty everywhere. Happy to hear you'll be learning from @bushkill, mentors are solo crucial, especially with bees. Hope to see you with some swarms boxes soon @senorcoconut ;).
I was sitting with the box on our land and saw a few dozen bees checking it out, so it looks promising.
P.s. we didn't follow the plans exactly as we couldn't get cedar wide enough to use solid pieces. We had to do the extra labor of cutting many lap joints.
I like that you guys aren't affraid of a little customizing when you don't have all the parts of a plan! Than again, with what you've gone through to get where you are in your homesteading journey, there probably isn't very much you are afraid of. 😎
@Bushkill mentioned a free class he gives at a library near by... so he doesn't know about being my mentor just yet, but I'm sure by now his ears are buzzing, we've mentioned him 3 times on this thread!!! See you in the next couple months @Bushkill...😁 (and there's the 4th time!)
If by next spring I haven't built a swarm box, I'm excpecting you to put a fire under me @mountainjewel....
Thanks
Wow! This is so cool. I am obsessed with the idea of bee keeping and desperately want to get moving forward on it. I love that you are doing this naturally and patiently. Local bees will surely be more resilient than those that have been shipped around and man handled (sometimes from other countries). You've given me a lot to consider.
I am eagerly awaiting all updates on this! :)
You are so right that local bees are more resilient! You're so spot on here. Some of the concepts behind natural bee keeping are improving genetics and survivability, not pampering unhealthy colonies with narrow genetics by letting weak genes die out instead of multiply. Dr. Leo has taught us both a lot and are loving the process so far. This book has been a valuable asset for some more historical info on natural bee keeping.
Happy to have you engaged and on board @walkerland!
I wish you two would come live here for a while! We could use your hands on expertise! I absolutely love everything that you are doing. I am soaking it up as much as possible. One day the book link you'll be sharing is your own book. Seriously. You are inspiring.
you are so sweet. this is such an encouraging comment i'm contemplating printing it out for a rainy day! xo
This is so cool! Good luck with this project!!
resteeming for my bee friends!
Glad you enjoyed and thanks for the resteem! More people doing this the better as it could replace some of the less healthful ways of keeping bees.
Amazing. How will you harvest? We had a swarm bless our place last year and our friend is a beekeeper so he gave us a box and comes and checks on them for us, and we get a percentage of the honey. It's lovely.. he comes around, smokes a joint, chats about bees, and off he goes.
We're both super stoked and have been watching the box on our land everyday. It brought me tears of joy this morning seeing many foragers/scouts checking it out. Sounds like a good friend to have ;). When we have attracted a swarm, we will move the box to our apiary, eventually transferring the frames into a 14 or 17 frame hive box. The harvest will be frame by frame and we will use a centrifuge (a European made Layens extractor), but that's still a while off.
That is really cool! Good luck with your bee catching, I can't wait to see what you get!
I am planning on including bees on our homestead but I may invite someone to take on that endeavor for themselves on our land. I don't want to spread myself thin by going in too many different directions.
Thanks for the support. We're blessed to live in such a healthy area without row crops and forest land.
I hear you on no going in too many directions, that's still a lesson I'm learning! Everything is just so darned interesting....
FYI our bee mentor checks his hives once or twice and year and most of the work is in building the hives and harvesting honey, so consider that it need not take too much outta you.
I will keep that in mind. Maybe it is more about just taking on one or two new projects at a time rather then a whole bunch. A lot of things require a lot of set up and time during the learning curve but then become easier and easier.