It is Time to be Thinking About Bait Hives

Swarms Are Precious: Why Not Try a Bait Hive and See What Happens?

Ron Brown, MBE (BKQ 57 Spring 1999)

Every year there are many reports of swarms hiving themselves in empty brood boxes, or even in stacks of honey supers, and there is no doubt that boxes that other bees have lived in are most attractive to bees looking for a home. If you have an empty hive, with frames of used combs, in the garden, you may notice bees going in and out as if curious. Should the number of bees doing this increase considerably over two or three days, they are probably scout bees sent out to look for a home by a colony about to swarm. The scout bees may even come from a swarm of bees hanging unobserved in a tree up to half a mile away. Within 48 hours or less the swarm may arrive.

Why not prepare a bait hive and see what happens? You will need a brood box (preferably British National size) in any case, so get it ready as soon as possible and fit it out with ten frames of foundation and one frame of old but clean, dark brood comb (to attract the scout bees). Even better would be a secondhand four or five frame nucleus box with frames of combs that have been bred in, and a small entrance smeared around with wax and warmed propolis scraped from one of the old frames. Place well above the ground, about 5' - 6' (2m) up; this is then very likely to attract a swarm during June and July.

When occupied, the bees can be shaken into your 'proper hive' and the trap set up again. Transfer just one of the old combs plus bees and replace it in the nucleus with a frame of foundation.

What are the snags? If you leave any space in the the bait hive not occupied by frames, the bees will choose to fill it with new, wild combs, perhaps built at an awkward angle, rather than use the frames provided. There is also the risk that wax moths will get to work on any old frames of comb and make a horrible mess of them, but these risks have to be taken, for a few weeks only.

What are the ethics of this? In law bees are wild creatures temporarily housed, but when they escape from an apiary they are considered to have regained their freedom, unlike cattle or sheep, hens or geese which are domesticated. Among beekeepers themselves, ownership of a swarm is usually conceded if a beekeeping neighbour says that he saw a swarm from one of his hives fly towards your premises, or if the queen is marked in a distinctive way. In practice this is rare, and a swarm may have come from a church steeple or a hollow tree.

Bait hive high up in a tree

(I see nothing at all wrong with putting up bait hives. It is a common practice in many countries (though illegal is some like Switzerland) and I remember a pleasant afternoon I spent with Job Pichon in Brittany doing the round of his baits. It took me some time to see them for they were often quite high up or hidden in the trees. Swarms are extremely valuable today - better that they end up in a bait hive of a beekeeper who is going to look after them and treat them rather than become a nuisance to the public should they enter a wall space and thus end up being destroyed. Editor.)