Swarm summary: It was an unusual swarm trap season.🤣 My neighbors helped me see a swarm select a sycamore tree cavity, and 43 days later this bee nest swarms and selected my swarm trap 7 houses away. Flight vigor at the bee nest has since increased - the bee nest is a gift that keeps giving!
I was hoping for something else!
- 9th March - I installed 4 swarm traps in my neighborhood
- active scouting began at two 40-liter swarm traps hanging from crepe myrtle limbs. Each swarm trap contained:
- 5x deep frames with plastic starter strips
- UV-reactive blue swarm trap entrance
- synthetically produced Nasonov pheromone
- 23rd March in the early afternoon - my traps are passed over as the bees selected a cavity in the sycamore tree trunk using a cut-off limb entrance and active scouting of swarm traps subsided
- 29th April - sycamore bee nest entrance was obscured by a huge bee beard - see the 2nd photo.
In a roundabout way, the moment I've been waiting for!
- active scouting restarted at the two 40-liter swarm traps
- 5th May at 5:30PM - bees selected my backyard 40-liter swarm trap and the sycamore bee nest entrance is no longer obscured by a huge bee beard - a flight journey of 290 feet (88 meters) - see the 1st photo.
- over the next 6 days after dark, I moved the occupied swarm trap in 5 steps towards my empty backyard hive stand. The after-dark move was made easier by leveling the next location during daylight hours.
- 13th May - I transferred 5 deep swarm trap frames to 8-frame equipment and moved the swarm lure to the 8-frame landing board. No smoking or brushing of bees was required. - see the 5th photo.
No comments:
Post a Comment