5 weeks ago we caught a swarm in one of our 7-frame Layens swarm traps. This morning we transferred the colony from the trap and into our 3rd 20-frame Layens hive.
Never again will we wait so long between catching the swarm and transferring the colony into a full hive! The swarm trap was so heavy I had trouble getting it down from the tree it was placed in. In fact, it’s just about a miracle that I brought the hive down from the tree instead of gravity bringing it down. I can’t recall how much a drawn out Layens frame weighs, but that trap was HEAVY! In 5 weeks the bees had drawn out new comb on 95% of the frames from scratch, and already had quite a lot of capped honey.
Since the distance between the swarm trap and the full hive we were putting them in was only a few hundred feet apart, we placed a tree branch in front of the hive entrance before moving the bees into their new home. The idea is that the bees will reset their inner GPS (metaphorically speaking) and come back to their new home instead of automatically flying back to the old trap’s location.
We are very happy this transfer ended well as it easily could have resulted in dropping a full trap of bees from about 15′. Two lessons we’ve learned: 1. when setting a trap, use a more supportive platform (not just a shim and a strap), and 2, don’t wait so long to move the new hive to its permanent location.
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| Loren getting the swarm trap down so we can transfer the bees. It was done before 6 a.m…..the camera didn’t work well in low light. |
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| Tree branch partially obstructing the one open entrance (branch removed after 2 days). The trap still had some bees in it so we left it on the ground for today. |