Tag Archives: bait hive

Bait hive location

We’re fast approaching the time of the season when colonies will attempt (and manage) to swarm. Swarming is the way bees increase their colony numbers.

Inevitably, because it means the loss of many of the foragers – the honey-gathering workers – beekeepers try and prevent or control swarming. Prevention is better than control, but it can be difficult or impossible to achieve.

Inevitably, a very large number of swarms are therefore lost.

The swarming process has been well-studied by eminent scientists like Martin Lindauer in the early 50’s and Tom Seeley more recently.

Swarming in a nutshell

The colony ‘decides’ to swarm. They rear one or more new queens in queen cells. On the 9th day after the egg is laid the cells are capped. Then or shortly afterwards the colony can be expected to swarm, with the original queen and up to half of the workers leaving with her. Swarming tends to happen on a warm, calm, sunny day (but not always). Casts may follow.

The swarm leaves the hive and settles nearby, in a tree or on a fencepost. Usually this initial ‘staging post’ is a short distance (perhaps 5-20 metres) from the hive. Scout bees fly from this swarm, surveying suitable locations in the area to set up a more permanent residence.

Swarm of bees

Swarm of bees

Actually, the scouts have been hard at work already. Once the swarm issues from the hive they set about persuading all the other scouts that they’ve found the ideal location. This ‘persuasion’ is the topic of the excellent book Honeybee Democracy by Tom Seeley.

Once a consensus is reached (which might take hours or a few days) the swarm leaves its temporary staging post and flies directly to the final location … a hollow tree, the church tower or above your neighbours soffit. There they set up home.

Most swarms do not survive. They get caught in a storm before relocating, they succumb to disease or they eventually starve to death. Since most strong colonies can – unchecked – be expected to swarm every year, the fact we’re not inundated with colonies indicates that most die.

One beekeepers loss can be another beekeepers gain.

Swarms can also be an annoyance to non-beekeepers. ‘Normal’ people. This always surprises me because a swarm is a stunning site and usually totally unthreatening and unaggressive 1.

Nevertheless, they can be an irritation, both when swarming or if they become established in the church tower or a hollow tree. And, without Varroa treatment they will act as a source of disease for other colonies in the locality through robbing and drifting 2.

So, rather than just let swarms disappear over the hedge or horizon, far better to capture them, put them in a hive and manage them properly 3.

There are essentially two ways to achieve this. Get them when they’re at their temporary staging post, drop them into a box and subsequently hive them. I’ve discussed this process before.

Captured swarm in 8 frame poly nuc

Captured swarm in 8 frame poly nuc …

Alternatively, set up one or more bait hives and entice a swarm to choose this location rather than the church tower or a hollow tree. Again, I’ve discussed how to set up a bait hives several times before.

Bait hives in a nutshell

Honeybee Democracy contains the definitive guide to the desirable characteristics of a bait hive. Conveniently it’s a dark box the size of a National brood box (~40 litres) with a small entrance (~12.5cm2) at the bottom. It helps a lot if it also smells of bees. This can easily be achieved by placing an old black brood frame up against one wall. Fill most or all of the rest of the box with foundationless frames 4 and place it in a suitable location.

Bait hive ...

Bait hive …

Which is – finally – what this post is all about.

Location, location, location

Seeley studied the desirable characteristics of both the bait hive and the location in which it is sited. By location I really mean height from the ground and orientation. However, he and others have also investigated how far from the original temporary staging post the swarm are prepared to fly to occupy a ‘des res’.

So, once you’ve prepared your bait hive(s), the three features of the location you need to think about are their a) orientation, b) height above ground, and c) distance from your bees (or other apiaries 5).

The first two are straightforward as Seeley describes in Honeybee Democracy. In the mid-70’s he conducted a series of experiments which showed that bees prefer bait hives that a) faced South and b) are located higher (5m from the ground) rather than lower (~1m) 6.

Most of the studies in Honeybee Democracy use artificially prepared swarms. Seeley would place these on a post and then observe where they relocated to … essentially he was circumventing the natural process of swarming by ‘starting’ them from the staging post. Many were conducted on an island where there were limited options to relocate to … and at limited distances.

These studies weren’t ideal to determine how far a swarm will relocate from its temporary staging post.

This is important in deciding whether to place bait hives in, near or distant from established hives.

Go forth and multiply, or vice versa

It might be logical to expect swarms to choose distant final destinations rather than nearby ones. For example, this might ensure less competition for forage. That would suggest that bait hives should be situated a long way from your own – or other – apiaries.

However, it turns out that when bees multiply they usually choose not to go forth very far. Although there is some contradictory evidence, it appears as though swarms prefer to relocate to nearby sites, rather than distant ones.

  1. Seeley and Morse (1977) demonstrated that swarms chose a nearby (~20m) site rather than a distant site (~400m) 80% of the time 7.
  2. Jaycox and Parise (1981) showed that swarms always chose sites less than 200m from the artificial swarms prepared for their study 8.
  3. Schmidt (1995) demonstrated that artificial swarms chose to relocate from as little as 0.5m to at least 1 km (average ~400m, i.e. much further away than the other studies) 9.

Why they prefer to set up home near to the original colony is unclear. At least one paper speculates it leaves the option to rob a genetically-related (and possibly less defensive) colony more easily.

Pragmatism and practical beekeeping

I set up bait hives every year. I’ve never failed to capture swarms. I’ve also – inadvertently – had swarms occupy stacks of stored brood boxes or supers. The entrances have faced almost every direction, with South East and South probably being the most often occupied.

However, this is a biased survey … I usually use the same site that worked in previous years.

Under offer ...

Under offer …

Although I’ve located bait hives high up on the top of greenhouses or sheds, the majority are on normal hive stands. This is pragmatism, not because they are more attractive to the bees at knee height 10.

I simply don’t want to climb a ladder to retrieve them 😉

Finally, I put them where I can see them and check them. I locate one in the corner of each apiary, as far from my other hives as possible, but probably never more than 10m away.

Pleasure and practical beekeeping

I also always have a bait hive in the garden where I can observe it on a daily basis. It’s great to see the first scouts appear, to watch their numbers increase day upon day, to keep an eye on the weather for a hot calm day … and to try and predict when the swarm will arrive.

Scout bees are not aggressive. They fly in a characteristic manner, checking the bait hive and the immediate vicinity from all directions.

If the numbers of scouts builds up to dozens or hundreds and they all disappear … either they’ve chosen somewhere else or the swam has been captured.

Or they’re guiding the swarm to your bait hive at that very moment.

Wait a few minutes. A swarm arriving is one of the really great sights in beekeeping 🙂

 

Scouting for girls

A swarm of bees is a wonderful sight … if it’s arriving in your bait hive. It’s still dramatic, but perhaps slightly less wonderful, if it’s disappearing over the fence from your apiary 😉

Although some will disagree, I think beekeepers have a responsibility to both control swarming of their own stock, and capture – or attract – swarms lost by others. Although perhaps incomprehensible to us, some don’t share our passion for bees. Many are frightened and a large swarm is an intimidating sight for the melissophobic.

A small swarm ...

A small swarm …

Aside from frightening people, if they move into the church tower or an old hollow tree, they’re likely to develop high levels of Varroa and the pathogenic viruses the mite transmits. As a consequence, they can act as a source of disease to bees in local apiaries, until they’re killed off in the winter. Which they almost certainly will be.

I therefore always put out bait hives in late Spring, well ahead of the expected start of the swarming season (which often coincides with the oil seed rape finishing). I’ve described the basics of bait hives previously – a National-sized, bee-smelling box containing one frame of old, dark comb and half a dozen foundationless frames. I often use stacked supers from the, otherwise-awful, Paradise poly hives for this purpose.

Dyb dyb dyb†

One of the greats sights of the swarming season is the appearance of the first scout bees at the bait hive. First one or two, then a dozen and, within hours or days, hundreds. They check out the entrance and the inside the bait hive. They fly all around the perimeter. They’re unaggressive and you can get up close to watch them at work. If you listen carefully you can hear them pinging into the sidewalls and floor of the bait hive as they move about inside.

They actually probably measure the volume by a combination of walking around the inner walls and determining the mean free path length – the average length of all straight lines from wall-to-wall in the hive – in short flights. For an interesting and easily readable discussion of the physics behind this I recommend the short paper by Nigel Franks and Anna Dornhaus (PDF) How might individual honeybees measure massive volumes?

In my view, this alone is a good reason to use foundationless frames in a bait hive.

Scouts often arrive early at the bait hive and leave late. Their numbers will fluctuate with weather and temperature – they’ll disappear altogether in the rain, but reappear in force once a shower has passed.

Scouting around

This short video was taken about 9am, two or three days before a large prime swarm occupied the bait hive. The first scout bees I’d seen had been almost two weeks previously. By midday there were hundreds of bees checking the hive.

However, if you look closely, their behaviour is distinctively different from a colony ‘in residence’. They’re much more hesitant in entering the hive and they tend to check the immediate environment much more closely. In contrast, foragers returning to a colony don’t bother doing a couple of laps of the hive … they approach directly and enter with minimal delay.

Seeley’s swarms

The definitive guide to how scout bees choose suitable locations and then ‘persuade’ the swarm to relocate is Honeybee Democracy by Tom Seeley. This is an outstanding book, beautifully written and illustrated.

Swarm of bees

Swarm of bees

Swarming is a two-stage process. The queen and flying bees leave the hive and settle nearby – on a branch, a fence post or (irritatingly) the top of a nearby conifer – creating the classic ‘beard-shaped’ cluster of bees. If you’re lucky with your timing and their location you can knock these into a box and, voila, you have a new colony.

Tom Seeley describes his own studies (based on the equally elegant work of Martin Lindauer in the 1950’s) that determine how scout bees convince the swarm to move from this temporary staging post to a new nesting location – a tree cavity, the church tower or your bait hive. The scout bees use a variation of the classic waggle dance – on the surface of the swarm hanging in the tree – to ‘persuade’ other scouts to check out the location they’ve found. Through repeated cycles of recruitment and reinforcement a consensus is reached and the scouts then lead the swarm to their new home.

That’s the abridged version. Read the book. There are subtleties and anecdotes throughout Honeybee Democracy that mean it’s the sort of book you can go back to time and time again, learning something new each time.

Early scouts

I was puzzled by the swarm that arrived in my bait hive. The first scouts appeared early in the first week of May. I was abroad from the 7th to the 14th and confidently expected the swarm to be waiting for me when I got back. However, it wasn’t until at least another week had elapsed – during which scout bee interest continued unabated – that the swarm arrived.

Honeybee democracy

Honeybee democracy

I went back to Honeybee Democracy and re-read the second chapter (‘Life in a honeybee colony’) and learnt – or was reminded – that there are early scout bees that are able to judge both nest site quality and the state of the colony preparing to swarm. These scouts are at work before the colony swarms. Uniquely these bees are judging both the availability and suitability of new homes and the readiness of the colony to swarm.

They can also tell whether it’s a nice day. The coincidence of these factors – good weather, readiness of the colony to swarm (i.e. sealed queen cells) and potential nest sites – initiate a behavioural change in these scouts that leads to the colony swarming.

Are these scouts the earliest sign of swarm preparation?

What Seeley doesn’t say is just how early in the swarming cycle these scout bees start their initial explorations.

Queens take 16 days to develop from new-laid eggs to eclosion, and just nine days to the sealing of the queen cell. If we assume that the first scouts I saw were from the same hive that subsequently swarmed (and delivered itself to my bait hive) then these scouts were out and about well-before queen cells were even started.

Of course, I have no way of telling whether the first scouts I saw were from the same colony that finally swarmed and arrived. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting thought. Perhaps scout bee interest in a bait hive pre-dates the first definitive swarm preparation signs beekeepers can usually recognise – the appearance of charged queen cells?

Considering the density of beekeepers (by which I mean apiaries 😉 ) in the UK it’s not easy to see how this would be useful … unless you’re the only beekeeper on an isolated island.

However, if you see do scout bee activity at your bait hives it might be worth being more assiduous than usual when checking your own colonies in the neighbourhood.

 

† Dyb dyb dyb is an abbreviation for ‘do your best‘. This was part of a cub (not scout) ceremony and was followed by Dob dob dob (‘do our best‘). It was abandoned in the late sixties, but lives on in tricky questions on Qi.

Colophon

Scouting for Boys

Scouting for Boys …

The title of this post is a play on ‘Scouting for Boys‘, the book on Boy Scout training, written and illustrated (originally) by Robert Baden-Powell and published in 1908. The book contains sections on scoutcraft, woodcraft, tracking, camp life, endurance, chivalry, life saving and patriotism. It was the inspiration for the scout movement and Baden-Powell was the founder and first Chief Scout of the Boy Scouts Association (and the founder of the Girl Guides). It is estimated that 4 million copies sold in the UK alone, with global sales in the 20th Century exceeding 100 million.

The book even contains reference to honey bees with the statement that bees form a ‘model community, for they respect their Queen and kill their unemployed’.

The Boy Scouts of America used to offer merit badges in Beefarming (1915-1955) and Beekeeping (from 1955). The Beekeeping merit badge was discontinued in 1995.

Scouting for Girls is an English pop rock band. They have recently announced their 10th Anniversary Tour (Oct/Nov 2017) which means they’re much too new for me to know any of their music 😉

 

Same time, next year

About this time last year a swarm arrived in a bait hive in my back garden in Fife. Almost exactly one year later a different bait hive in the same spot was occupied by another swarm … or, possibly, a very good-sized cast.

The bait hive was being investigated by scout bees for a few days but on 6th, which was a very warm day here in Fife, the numbers increased markedly from a couple of dozen to a hundred or more. On my return from work on the following day the swarm was in residence. My neighbour reported seeing a ‘huge swarm arriving’ at about 11am.

Foundationless frames and bait hives

The hive contained a single old, dark brood frame and about five foundationless frames, together with a cotton bud dipped in lemongrass oil. I’ve previously described why I think foundationless frames are so convenient for bait hives – they provide the bees with guides to build new comb without taking up significant space in the box. It’s worth remembering that the scout bees are seeking out a sheltered, south facing, bee-smelling (ideally), empty space of about 40 litres volume i.e. about the same as a single National brood box. Foundationless frames take up little space, but mean that an arriving swarm can start building new comb immediately … and they do.

I posted a photo last week of a swarm from the bee shed that had clustered because the queen was clipped and so unable to fly. I dealt with the swarm within a couple of hours of it settling. Once cleared, the wall of the bee shed was dotted with small crescents of wax as the bees had already started to build new comb. In the bait hive, when checked on the evening of the 8th (less than 48 hours after the bees arrived) they were well on their way to drawing out the first three foundationless frames, with the first of these being half full of nectar, presumably from the dregs available in the nearby OSR fields.

Mite treatment be needed?

Almost certainly … and there’s no better time. When swarms leave a hive they take with them up to 35% of the Varroa population as phoretic mites. A large swarm from a heavily infested hive can therefore introduce an unhealthy dose of virus-riddled mites to your apiary. These will rapidly spread to your other hives. I therefore routinely treat swarms with suitable miticides soon after they arrive, well before any brood is sealed. I don’t look for DWV symptoms or bother searching for signs of phoretic mites, I just treat. Due to work commitments this swarm had to be treated on the third day after arrival, before I was even certain whether the queen was laying or not. Within the first 24 hours after treatment (with sublimated oxalic acid) there were about 40-50 mites on the board, with more falling over the next couple of days. It’s far easier and more effective to treat when there’s no brood present and so give the colony the very best chance of getting well established without a pathogenic virus load.

Finally, after a day of heavy rain, I took advantage of the bees being all ‘at home’, sealed the entrance and relocated them to another apiary to make space for a replacement bait hive on the same spot … on the off chance that swarming here isn’t over yet.

If it is, then there’s always the same time, next year.

Same time, next year was a 1978 romantic comedy starring Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn about a couple, married to others, who meet by chance, develop an “instant rapport” or at least “really hit it off” (one of the quotes from the film) and then meet again, year after year, both gradually changing, ageing and dealing with life’s crises.

Beekeepers’ holidays

It can be tricky balancing the annual cycle of beekeeping activities with maintaining family responsibilities and domestic bliss. At least, I’m told I find it tricky 😉  Holidays, in particular, are problematic. I’m talking here about beekeepers’ holidays not beekeeping holidays, which are an entirely different thing. Many of the standard “family holiday” periods overlap with key events in the beekeeping calendar … and because the latter is influenced by the weather, it’s difficult to predict a few days ahead, let alone the 6-9 months that appear to be required to arrange a fortnight’s yacht charter in the Bahamas§.

Mallorcan market honey and (sort of) observation hive

Mallorcan market honey and (sort of) observation hive

With good weather, colony build-up is going to be full-on in April, and in a really good year you can be starting queen rearing at Easter if it is late in the month. May is when the swarming season starts … and ends in June, just in time for the “June gap” to start which (in a bad year) might require colonies to be fed. The summer months of July and August are busy with the main flow, preparing colonies for the heather or harvesting (and possibly more queen rearing). September means Varroa treatments should be applied and colonies should be fed syrup or fondant for the winter. And then midwinter is interrupted by oxalic acid treatment (or Api-Bioxal if you’re the type of beekeeper who can afford Bahamian cruises), checking stores etc. And almost all of the timings above can be plus or minus at least a fortnight to take account of the vagaries of the weather.

February and November might be provisionally free … which creates another weather-related problem. Firstly – if honey sales have gone well during the year (and they’ll need to have been good as the 90m Athena is an eye-watering $350,000/week) – you’ll not want to be going island-hopping in the Bahamas in November as it’s still the hurricane season. Secondly, if your knees are as bad as many beekeepers’ backs, skiing in February might be a non-starter even if snow is available.

Less is more …

… likely to avoid you losing a swarm. The duration of the family holiday is also an issue. Inspections really need to be conducted at 7 day intervals during the main part of the season – say late-April to late-July. A fortnight away can mean missing the development of queen cells which are capped on the ninth day, at which point the prime swarm with your queen and foraging workforce disappear over the apiary fence. Not only do you return to a rather emptier hive, but your chance of a good honey crop has just been significantly reduced. You can increase the inspection interval to 10 days if you clip your queens, but that’s still four days short of the fortnight.

Queen rearing, from colony preparation, through grafting, cell raising and getting the virgin queens mated, takes about a month and – although not hugely time-consuming – is very-much time-critical. Getting to your cell raiser a day late might mean you have a box with one virgin running about and a pile of virgin queen corpses.

Apiary in Andalucia

Apiary in Andalucia

Nevertheless, with a little preparation, an appreciation of colony development and your fingers firmly crossed it is possible to get away during the beekeeping season without too many problems.

Holiday solutions

It seems to me that there are three obvious solutions …

  1. Go between late autumn and early spring, to the southern hemisphere if you’re after some warm sunshine. Or to Aspen or Whistler for the skiing if your knees are up to it.
  2. Get a friend to look after your colonies and go whenever you want. Depending how well behaved your colonies are, or the state you find them in on your return, this might only work once per friend 😉
  3. Accept that some beekeeping activities will be interrupted, prepare well and go for a week.

My knees are a bit dodgy and I get more than enough long-haul with work commitments so option 1 doesn’t work for me. I’ve avoided option 2 as I either have too many colonies to think it’s reasonable to foist upon a beekeeping friend, or they’re so badly behaved I’m too embarrassed to ask∇. So option 3 is the only choice … which is why I didn’t post anything last week as I was enjoying the walking in the Serra de Tramuntana in Mallorca.

Benjamin Franklin was right

Bait hives ...

Bait hives …

By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail. Sneaking off for a week just as swarming period was kicking off, with the best weather of the season predicted to arrive and the OSR in full flower, might have been asking for trouble. However, a little time spent on preparation helped avert disaster. Bait hives were put out near the apiaries. Remaining overwintered nucs were unceremoniously dumped into a full hive. Any colonies looking even vaguely crowded were given lots of additional space and almost all were on double broods by the time I left. Every full colony was given one additional empty super. Where necessary, one or two frames stuffed with stores were removed and replaced with foundation or drawn comb. Finally, all colonies were checked for queen cells and other obvious signs of swarm preparation the day before I left.

Nine days later I returned … none of the bait hives had been occupied, none of the colonies had swarmed, almost all of the colonies were doing precisely what they should have been doing which was building up strongly and filling the supers. Two in the bee shed were doing particularly well, having almost filled several supers. Pretty much everything was under control with the exception of one queenless colony that, the day before my departure, had been given a frame of eggs and young larvae but had failed to make any decent queen cells.

During my absence the weather in Fife was excellent … in contrast, I walked into this lot in the Tramuntana …

Thunderstorm overlooking the Bay of Pollenca

Thunderstorm overlooking the Bay of Pollenca, Mallorca …

Despite not going on a beekeeping holiday, it’s still possible to see – and sample – some of the local beekeeping activities, as shown in the photos at the top of the page from Mallorca and Andalucia† taken in previous trips.

§ I wish

∇ Just in case you’re thinking of buying bees from me please note that this is a rather poor joke 😉

† As an aside … I’ve never seen an area with more hornets that this region of Southern Spain

A late start …

After a couple of false alarms, the season finally feels like it’s about to start, with temperatures predicted to be consistently into the (low) teens by this time next week. It’s been a punishing Spring as far as my beekeeping has been concerned with lots of queen failures due to poor mating success last year. I therefore need to expand my current stocks in time for the summer nectar flow – ever hopeful! – but am pretty-much resigned to not being able to exploit the oil seed rape (OSR) that is just about starting to flower in the fields nearest my out apiary (it’s already flowering well in other parts of the county – out of foraging range for my bees though).

OSR 30th April 2015 ...

OSR 30th April 2015 …

Go forth and multiply

It’s not all doom and gloom though … colonies that are queenright are expanding well despite the weather. Those in the bee shed are doing particularly well, with part-filled supers (dandelion perhaps?) and colonies expanding up to a double brood box. As an aside, I’d estimate that these colonies are at least 2-3 weeks further advanced than those ‘outside’ … I’ll discuss this in more detail in a later post. Furthermore, the colonies that haven’t developed DLQ’s include some beautifully docile bees, very steady on the comb even when inspecting them in less than ideal conditions, of which we’ve had lots this Spring. With the expectation (or at least hope) of much better weather by the end of the month I’ll be setting up some vertical splits. This is an easy way of either requeening or making increase, involving a minimum of equipment and almost no interventions in terms of hive manipulations. This is queen rearing made easy … simply dividing a suitable colony and giving each half an opposing entrance, then turning the colony through 180° after 7 days. I’ve also sourced a couple of Snelgrove boards to try this year, but work commitments mean these will have to wait until later in the season as they need a little more attention than a simple split board.

Split board

Split board …

Covet thy neighbours bees … or at least catch his swarms

With the assumption that other strong colonies are at least as well advanced as mine I’ve also set out a number of bait hives. Each of these contains an old dark brood frame – importantly containing no stores or you just attract robbers – pushed against the back wall and several (6-9) foundationless frames. The top bar of the old brood frame gets a few drops of lemongrass oil (this stuff ‘eats’ poly hives, which is what my bait hives are made from, so make sure you keep it restricted to the wooden frame). Bait hives should also have solid floors and small entrances – so I cover the OMF with a few scraps of Correx. Finally, to save on equipment I also often use a simple square of heavy duty polythene sheeting as a crownboard.

I set bait hives out every year, catching a few swarms that would otherwise disappear into the church tower, someones loft space or perish in a thunderstorm. It’s always a bit hit and miss in terms of the quality of bees that are attracted … of course, other than when I catch a swarm from my own colony 😉 The peak swarming season extends over the next 6-8 weeks and the bees are always useful, if only to act as willing recipients for queens raised next month when I’ll start grafting.

Bait hives ...

Bait hives …

New queens

Finally, I’ve ordered a couple of queens from a reputable (UK-based) queen breeder to improve the genetics of my stocks. One of my apiaries is in a region with predominantly black ‘native’-type bees in the area, and with local beekeepers keen to keep it that way. I’ll requeen colonies in this apiary with these queens – and in due course their daughters – to be both a good neighbour and to see whether these ‘native’ bees perform better than my Heinz (57 varieties) local mongrels.