New swarm trap

So this spring, with the move of the hives, we had to come up with a new location for the swarm trap we had.  We had our original swarm trap on the side of our shed, which is just around the corner from where the bees were.  It was one of those giant peat pot type traps and in the 2 or 3 years we had it up, I never saw a bee in it.  Might be time to make a new swarm trap.  After a little internet research, I decided to make a swarm trap that is actually very similar to a nuc box.  I got some pine boards and after a little cutting and nailing, had a nice swarm trap that held 5 deep frames nicely.  We have a nice tree about 35' in front of the new hive location and I attached it about 9 ft up on May 30, 2013.  I also removed the feeders and installed two shallow supers on the three strong hives.

Swarm trap near hives

Over the next few days we noticed there were bees checking it out (I baited the trap with two old drawn frames and two frames of foundation, and a few drops of lemongrass oil).  This evening I checked the trap again and there were a ton of bees going in and out, so I suited up and sure enough, the swarm trap was completely full of bees.  I took the trap down and found it had one of our marked queens, but I'm not sure which hive it came from.  While inspecting the swarm I discovered they had been very busy and had quite a lot of comb drawn out in the space where the missing frame was.  They had also drawn the two foundations frames a lot.  I didn't see any eggs yet, but there was a lot of nectar being stored.  I removed the two old frames, shaking the bees back into the trap, scraped off the burr comb and installed three more frames of foundation.

We don't have equipment for another full hive, so we'll be giving this swarm to some local beekeepers.  I learned I have to come up with a better way to mount the hive to the tree because it's a pain to take it off and put it back up, especially when on a ladder and surrounded by so many bees.  However, I'm pretty pleased with how well the swarm trapped worked.

Caught a swarm within 5 days of putting it up

Inspecting swarm trap on left