Introduction.
Tom Seeley is Emeritus Professor of Biology at Cornell University NY. As one of the world’s most prominent scientists, Tom has contributed much to our present understanding of honey bee behaviour and shares this knowledge in his many books. Honeybee Democracy must be the most fascinating book that I’ve read about bees and is a great favourite with many other beekeepers.
Tom has been fascinated by bees since he was a small boy watching a swarm of bees move into a walnut tree near his home in Ithaca, upper New York. Since then he has been closely involved with this intriguing insect. He writes about beekeeping both as a scientist and an experienced beekeeper which makes his work doubly valuable and the information easy for any beekeeper to access.
Tom is one of the few beekeepers to have a species of bee named after him, Neocorynurella seeleyi, and to be called over to Southeast Asia to solve a mystery. See Yellow-rain article.
In 2016, Tom and others were presented with a Golden Goose award for The Honey Bee Algorithm which is rather an amazing bit of work that uses information gleaned from studying honey bee communication and employs it to enhance IT in the business world.
https://www.goldengooseaward.org/awardees
It’s now over to Tom to tell us about his own beekeeping experiences with bait hives. I’m very appreciative to him for contributing to beelistener and I know you will enjoy this.
Bait Hives.
Last Saturday, the second day of May, the weather was warm and sunny, so I decided to devote the morning to setting out 10 bait hives to trap some swarms. I put out bait hives mainly to replace colonies lost over winter, but also to have some fun. I enjoy the spring ritual of pulling from my storage shed the 6-frame, “nucleus box” hives that I use for this purpose; filling each one with frames holding old, aromatic comb; and driving my old pickup truck around to secluded places in my home valley (Ellis Hollow). This is where I have been trapping swarms in bait hives for more than 40 years. The photos show four of these places, each with a bait hive set in place.
We now know what makes an attractive nesting cavity for honey bees: volume at least 25 liters, entrance hole small (about 20 cm2) and high above ground level (the higher the better), and presence of combs built by a prior colony. My bait hives fulfill all of these desiderata, except that I do not put my boxes more than a meter or so above ground level. This is for safety. When it comes time to collect an occupied bait hive, it can be heavy with bees and honey, so getting it down a ladder can be dangerous. Last summer, for example, I fell off a ladder while taking an occupied bait hive down from the roof of a shed. I was lucky: somehow, I landed on my bottom, and the hive landed in my lap with its entrance still screened tight and its lid still on top. Ever since this close call, I have told myself firmly, “Tom, no more bait hives high off the ground!”
Besides filling each bait hive with 6 frames filled with old comb, I will tuck a swarm lure in the entrance of each bait hive. This lure–sometimes called a “swarm bait”–is a small, plastic vial that holds a few drops of the Nasonov gland pheromone and releases it slowly. I buy my swarm lures from Betterbee (see betterbee.com.) I know from my investigations of how swarms choose their homes that these swarm lures make potential dwelling places conspicuous to nest-site scouts. Note: I will tuck a swarm lure inside a bait hive’s entrance only after I have set the hive in its place, so the lure cannot fall out while I am moving the hive around.
Once I have my bait hives in place, I like to check them every 10-14 days or so. Finding a heavy traffic of bees at a hive is always a thrill, but to be sure that a swarm has indeed moved into a bait hive, I look for bees bearing loads of pollen entering the hive. Seeing this tells me that a busyness of bees at a bait hive is not merely a mob of robbers stealing honey from the combs or a crowd of scouts inspecting the site. If I see pollen collectors, I know for sure that a swarm has moved in.
The final task is to collect the bait hive and bring it home. This is a matter of coming to it either at daybreak or evening (so the bees’ traffic at your bait hive will be minimal), then putting wire screen over its entrance opening, and finally moving the bait hive to your apiary. If it has been occupied by a large swarm, or it has been occupied for some time, then you may need to “nudge” (with smoke) the bees to move inside before you screen the entrance. It is important to minimize the time that the bait hive’s entrance is screened, for it may contain a strong colony. If so, then the colony will be vulnerable to overheating during the move.
Important note: you will need to move the occupied bait hive at least 3 km (and preferably 4+ km) to prevent its occupants from returning to their previous home address.
To my mind, the complete honey bee enthusiast is a beekeeper (who manages colonies living in hives), a bee hunter (who tracks down colonies living in trees and buildings), and a bee trapper (who catches swarms with bait hives). I hope this blog will be helpful to those who want to pursue this third way of having fun with our best friend among the insects, Apis mellifera.
Well done Ann and Tom! I thoroughly enjoyed this post.
Thank you, Megan, I’m glad that you enjoyed this post so much. I think that it will help a lot of people to know that they don’t have to place bait hives too high up for them to work well.
I enjoyed that, Ann and Tom. Thank you. I will copy and paste the paragraph on Toms unfortunate accident, onto a message and send it to my son who is planning to put a hive on his garage roof in London. He will take notice of this, as he has sat with me at The national Honey Show and been fascinated by Tom’s lectures. (A mother’s natural anxiety isn’t enough to deter him). xx
Thank you, Margaret. I hope your son gets a swarm safely. Nice that he went to the NHS with you too.
Lovely to read this blog. I still have good memories of Tom coming over to my house last year we all had a cup of tea sitting on the wall while Tom set up his little box with aniseed oil to attract the wild bees in the area then see how long it took for one to visit, be marked, then let the others know and working out time then approx mileage. It was fascinating. What a lovely man. He has such incredible insight when it comes to bees and you can see why bees have been his life’s work.
Thank you. Yes, that was fun Susan. Tea on the wall was memorable. I’m keen to follow up on those bees near your old home. Maybe if the field is clear of cattle with young calves it could be tried again. Linton will help me once the OSR is over and the bees are keen for nectar. It might work then. Keep a look out for honey bees over at Errogie. Our bee hunting adventures feature in June’s Bee Craft magazine.
Thanks for this Ann and Tom. I have beginners setting out bait hives at the moment, just in case the swarm prevention measures don’t go to plan. And who knows, they may catch a stray swarm from elsewhere. I will pass on the link to your blog, it’s always good to get sound, tried and tested, advise from a fellow enthusiast. Yvonne
Good to hear this Yvonne and thank you for commenting.
A lovely post, for me attracting a swarm, especially a feral swarm, in a bait box is a sign that you are beginning to understand them and may in fact be worthy of being their keeper.
Hello Tristan. Welcome to beelistener and thank you for commenting on Tom’s guest blog. I agree with you. Having a bait hive has made me more aware of what is going on in my own apiary too. When I saw bees sniffing round one on my bait hives 2 weeks ago it made me think that swarming was imminent. Sure enough, during inspections on Saturday I discovered that in one colony the queen was slimmer and had reduced egg laying. Some cells in the middle of the brood frames were being back filled with nectar. The bottom brood box had 4 swarm cells. I used the nuc method of control. These bees are quite orange/yellow and the same colour as the scouts at the bait hive, whereas all the other colonies are dark with a high proportion of Carniolan genes.
Thank you so much Tom for sharing your knowledge and experience. I’m getting a lot of good ideas from your blog to improve my bee trapping. It is great fun like foraging, finding something good and precious for free. I hope you’ve a successful year!🙂👍
Anna Maria
Great post Tom and Anne. I know that bait hives should be 300m away from the apiary to catch your own swarms. But I place a bait hive about 50m from my hives, still in my garden. The bees won’t, probably occupy it but they will check it out.
When I go to look at my hives, every day in the swarming season, I look first at the bait hive. If there are scout bees I go looking for the swarm. It’s a great indicator of bee activity.
While doing this one day in 2021 I saw 50 or 60 bees at the entrance to the bait hive. I immediately went looking but no swarm. I was very puzzled and sat down to observe. The out of the sky came a swarm from somebody else’s apiary.
So bait hives are very useful even if you catch no swarms but you might and even better someone else’s.
Lovely story, Stephen. Thank you for sharing it. I haven’t caught any of my own swarms either in my bait hive, but, like you, was lucky enough to watch one fly in over the hedge from the west a couple of years ago. However, it messed up the dynamics in my home apiary as the swarm has always had high varroa levels, and I am reducing treatments (organics acids and biotechnical methods only) gradually in my colonies. I requeened the “swarm” colony last season so will watch the varroa levels carefully. The first sugar roll test of the season looked good with 1 varroa/300 bees.
Hiya,
Thank you very much for the blog. We set up some bait hive in our apiary aka our garden as we didn’t need the equipment.
Yesterday, we observed huge amounts of traffic for a couple of hours. Sadly, no swarm has moved in yet.
However, today I saw a line bee continuously circling the two bait hives. Then another bee arrived and went into one of the hives (the one that has attracted a lot of attention yesterday) to inspect. During her inspection the other bee (who has been checking the hives) moved closer to the entrance but did not go in or land, but flying smaller circles around the entrance. When the newcomer came out again the bee that was circling appeared to start fighting with the newcomer. Newcomer went back into the hive and this time she was followed by the circling bee.
Do swarms post guard bees at the chosen site for their nest? What else could this behaviour be about? Any ideas?
She’s still circling and has been pretty much all day (well, every time I took a break from work I spotted a bee drawing wife circles) 😄 I hope she is being relieved from her duties soon, she just be exhausted 😉
Many thanks for your thoughts on this.
Hello Elke,
Good observing of the scout bees at your (empty) bait hive. Yes, indeed, scouts from different swarms will fight one another to gain, or hold, “ownership” of a bait hive. I once studied this defense of a prospective home site by setting up two swarms (one of yellow bees and one of black bees) on a treeless, 40-ha island, and then providing just one bait hive. The fighting at the bait hive was fierce. The scouts from the yellow-bee swarm fought off those from the black-bee swarm, and then the yellow-bee swarm moved in.
One question for you: What is a “wife circle”? First time I’ve seen this expression. –Tom
Dear Tom,
Thank you so much for your answer and confirming my observations and conclusions were correct. I suspect we didn’t provide the best home (too small, we since added a tier to make it more attractive) or the weather got in the way or the queen was clipped and the swarm unable to leave. Either way, we still have an empty bait hive and still seeing interest in it. It is providing me with tons of entertainment during my lunch breaks.
I’m afraid I don’t know what a “wife circle” is either. My phone decided I meant wife instead of wide 😁
Thanks you again so very much for your answer and also for all your great tasks, papers, blood etc. We’re huge fans of your research. Wish I could earn a living in this field myself and follow my passion. Only in our third season of beekeeping though and still tons to learn. Such fascinating little creatures.
All the best, Elke