Love your channel, Newbee here😅I live up in the Rockies. My question is…..i had bought a few Nucs (I know, I just couldn’t catch any swarms last year and am so impatient to catch swarms this year). Anyhow, my first Nuc I cut the langstroth frames and then screwed them into my layens frames. My second Nuc I built adapter frames and used those. My third Nuc I just placed the langstroth frames sideways using my layens frames as a holder, does that make sense? My question is….for this third Nuc how do I rotate out the langstroth frames out? And should I do this before winter?
That sounds like a great experiment; I'd be interested to hear how the various conversion methods work for you. As for rotating out the Langstroth frames, I think the best approach is to keep adding frames on the brood end of the hive (close to the entrance), moving the Langstroth frames farther into the hive. If the bees cooperate they should keep adding brood close to the entrance and fill the frames deeper in the hive with honey. Eventually you should be able to harvest from the Langstroth frames or, at least, set them out for the bees to clean.
@@SuburbanSodbusterso as I understand it from an outsider perspective, bees will first build comb for brood and the use it once for brood? Or does brood comb get used repeatedly? But after the used brood comb is empty and the colony is expanded, the empty cells are then used to store food for survival in lean times? Is the further area from the entrance chosen (in your opinion) as an efficiency factor or more as a security measure to prevent something from coming in to raid their stores?
I caught more bees using just old honeycomb in old boxes than anything else, the older the better. Hang the traps about 5 feet off the ground and have caught 11 so far this season.
Lemongrass oil always works. It’s natural and cheap. Swarm commander is way too expensive. 15’ is way to high and unsafe. Even Dr Seeley recently suggested hanging traps at a safe height. I’ve used a safe 6’ height and caught swarms every year. Some are even using water barrels with success. When lifting a healthy swarm off the tree it can weight easily 50-60lbs after one week. Safely bringing the box down is critical while holding the box and walking backwards down the ladder. Catching swarms in a Layens swarm trap is very easy. Don’t let people make it too hard for you. You don’t need special equipment or sprays. I’ve helped 6 people this year catch swarms in Layens traps. They are all excited about getting good local bees without paying. Give it a try. You’ll never go back to paying for bees.
Not a dime - they just sent some product for me to try and I did. The experiment and results are just as described. My online store has both LGO and SC products, and my margins are better on the LGO that I package, so I have no incentive to tip the scale toward SC.
Congratulations, good job. Last year I caught my swarm using lemongrass oil. I have heard that other beekeepers have success using other products. This year I'm continuing with lemon grass, probably the small bottle of this oil I bought will last me for several years. This time I hung the swarm trap at a height of 7 feet, half the height compared to last year. I'll see how successful it will be this time.
I have been wondering if Swarm Commander was worth it, and now I know. Thanks. Also, I am hoping you will return to your conversion hive. I want to build one but would like to know how well it works before committing. Thanks for all your videos, they really help us nu-bees. (no pun intended)
I've used the conversion hive since the original colony with good success. Last year swarm season got hectic and I ran out of Layens boxes and was using Langstroth. Not really wanting to increase my number of Langstroth hives, I used the conversion hive to migrate another colony. They are still in that hive along with Langstroth frames now used for surplus honey storage; I plan to harvest those this summer.
