By: Mike Champlin
Spring has arrived along with swarm season here locally. My approach to building swarm traps is to give the scout bees an easy choice and best of all – make it simple for me to move the swarm onto a permanent spot in my apiary. These swarm box adapters are easy to build, inexpensive and take up little storage space when not in use.
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I make custom swarm trap bottoms (a universal base) out of 1×4 boards with a fixed plywood floor. It’s essentially a four-inch feeder shim with a plywood base attached. Each side has metal brackets for attaching either a deep or medium brood box on top of the swarm base, along with screened vent holes. This approach gives the swarm trap an optimal sized (40-60L) cavity that the scout bees find attractive. I load my traps with two frames of empty brood comb and two empty frames with beeswax starter strips. The comb is an added attractant and the empty frames give the swarm’s wax building machine someplace to build out. With only four or five frames in the trap, the box appears to have lots of space which also entices the swarm to move in and start building.
The plywood bottom extends near the front opening for an integrated landing board, and there is a swiveling door to close off the wide opening when relocating the trap. I use the elongated entrance openings to give the swarm plenty of room to enter, but it’s small enough to avoid those pesky squirrels or birds who want to explore the unoccupied traps too. Once back at my apiary, I can remove the four screws on the braces and easily shift the fully loaded hive box with frames and bees over onto a new permanent bottom board and hive stand. I will then finish loading the transferred box up with empty frames or a couple of resource frames to further anchor the swarm into their new home. Now I can grab another empty deep box and reload my universal swarm trap base to set up for another swarm capture.
The key benefit of this approach is by using a regular deep hive box for the trap; I have a one-step process to re-hive them in my yard. This transfer method is less stressful on the bees because the colony is hardly disturbed at all in the relocation process and they quickly reorient to their new hive location. The swarm trap bases take up very little space when stored over Winter, and I can use my existing hive boxes without making dedicated swarm boxes. If you have any questions or comments about building your own swarm box adapter, I can be contacted at blindbeehoney@gmail.com.
