# Anyone Have Plans For A KTBH Swarm Trap?



## BigDawg (Apr 21, 2013)

I just finished my first KTBH and would love to set out some swarm traps. I have a 5 frame langstroth nuc, but, it seems like if I'm going to try and install a caught swarm into a KTBH that it would be easier if I started with a KTBH swarm trap....at least that's what I'm thinking. 

Does anyone have any plans to share?

Thanks!

BD


----------



## DarkWolf (Feb 20, 2013)

Simply build it the same way you built your other top bar hive, but only make it long enough for 6-8 bars or so. 

Same dimensions, same bar size, easy peasy.


----------



## BigDawg (Apr 21, 2013)

Thanks, I guess that's what I was wondering--how many bars to make it long enough for.

BD



DarkWolf said:


> Simply build it the same way you built your other top bar hive, but only make it long enough for 6-8 bars or so.
> 
> Same dimensions, same bar size, easy peasy.


----------



## DarkWolf (Feb 20, 2013)

NP.. Volume wise, you're shooting for at least 40 liters, or 2,400 cubic inches. So how ever many bars it takes to get around that size volume seems to be the baseline recommendation for bait hives.


----------



## Colleen O. (Jun 5, 2012)

I made two from a three foot long temporary hive I had built last year. The depth is a bit less than my normal hives because I used what I had on hand which were 1 X 10s instead of 1 X 12s. One is ten bars plus two 1/8" spacers long and the other is eight plus the two spacers. The ten bar one seems about right (I can always reduce the space with a follower if necessary) but I haven't had any takers in either yet so who knows if I got it right. I plan to use them as nucs for splits if no swarms move in.


----------



## shannonswyatt (May 7, 2012)

I'm looking forward to someone besides Tomas having bees in there TBH bait hives. I think it rains bees where he lives! Late to this post, but I've made 12 inch and 16 inch TBH nucs for swarm traps (8 each) and I have a 2 footer baited in the back yard. There haven't been many swarms in my area (only one that I've seen listed on Beesource) so at this point I'm not sure what the best size is. 40 litters on my traps would be about 16 or 18 bars, which would be too heavy for me to put up in trees. A twelve bar hive is pretty darn heavy. 

Next year I'm just going to make boxes but use top bars in them. This way I can make them out of thin plywood and mounting to a tree will be a little easier. 

I was thinking about making TBH swarm traps from plywood, but I need the nucs anyway, so it made sense to make them out of something I can use after swarm season. Maybe I'll try to come up with something that will work from plywood.


----------



## Tomas (Jun 10, 2005)

I do catch swarms down here in Honduras, but I suspect it is more the Africanized bee than my trap hives. The trap hives I’ve designed, however, do work well for me. The way I’ve designed them and use them makes them cheap, light weight, easy to hang, easy to lower from the trees, portable and successful for catching swarms.

Here are some past posts where I talk about how I make and use them.

http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...-Made-Swarm-Box&p=272138#post272138post272138

http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?217360-TBH-for-a-swarm

http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?218462-Swarm-Trap

The boxes use ten bars but only eight are actually usable by the bees. The two that are at either end are over the side of the box and actually nailed to it and keep all the other eight bars snugged tight between them. 

I’ve had some that had only seven usable bars but I didn’t like that—kept thinking that it wasn’t enough space. But I also wouldn’t want to really go bigger either because than I get into issues of bulkiness when transporting them (and also possibly too heavy if you happen to leave the swarm in there for an extended period of time and they build a lot of comb/grow.)

The biggest disadvantage to using tbh trap hives is transporting them. If you carry them by hand to the apiary there isn’t much of a problem (except, again, if they are really full of bees and comb—they can get heavy). Many times I move them tied to the back of my scooter. I go slow and I can dodge pot holes easily enough. If I take them in the back of a truck I will put them in an empty tbh padded with sponge to help buffer the jolts of going over the road up to the coffee farm (really bad). I can still have comb breakage, however. That can be a mess to fix. The comb is always new and fragile. 

I fill about 85 percent of the boxes I hang. I had about 30 swarms this season without really doing it too intensively. Lots of boxes were emptied of the swarm and then not hung up again. 

You have to take into consideration that Africanized bees usually aren’t very particular about where they set up their new home (someone here in town wants me to come and get a colony that moved into a piece of 8 inch PCV tubing he has in his backyard). But even if I would be back in the States doing beekeeping, I don’t think I would change the size of the box. This size did work for my brother and me when I was back in Wisconsin several years ago.

Rains are going to begin really soon and swarming season is basically over now. I wish everyone up north lots of luck with catching swarms.

----------

Tom


----------



## shannonswyatt (May 7, 2012)

I've put my TBH traps fairly close to the road. They are heavy enough empty! The farthest one from the road is at a gun range where I can use a golf cart to retrieve it. I hope to get a swarm in that one, but if I do I will leave it in place for a few weeks to let the comb age a little. I'll worry more about it if it gets a hive. The rest are all with 100 feet of a road. I'm old and slow, but I can carry one to my car at that distance. This is one of the limits for me hanging traps.


----------



## Discos_Dead (Sep 28, 2013)

I just finished (almost - still searching for the 1/8" hardware cloth for the bottom vent) building a TBH, which will be the first hive of any kind that I've owned... so I may not be the expert you're looking for. I built a swarm trap using the two follower boards from the TBH as templates. Before I cut the sides of the trap to length, I calculated the area of the trapezoid made by my follower board, and then figured out how many bars I'd need to be able to fit in the trap to have a volume of at least 40 liters (61.0237 cubic inches in a liter). For mine, it turned out to be 10 bars. I'm thinking of building a couple of more traps to raise my chances for success. Good luck with yours!


----------



## Colino (May 28, 2013)

Hello BigDawg:
I built my traps 16 3/4 inches long this gives you an even number of topbars ripped off of old 2x6 lumber, same angles as Phil Chandlers TBH. I caught 2 swarms from 5 traps. Whats nice is I didn't even have to move them to a full size topbar because I built a removable panel on one end and as the one hive grew I just attached another trap to double the size. I have now managed to scavenge enough lumber to build 31 more so I plan to put out 36 traps in the spring. This was the first time I have done any trapping and I gleaned a bunch of info off of YouTube about where to set my traps. All I used for attractant was bees wax rubbed inside the trap and lemongrass oil. Also I read some where that swarms don't like new lumber so I have set my traps outside for the winter unpainted and open to try to weather them a bit. I might add that I did build a full size TBH but it sits empty looking real pretty with an observation window and its little peaked roof, meanwhile my Bees are content in hives made from scavenged lumber and old pallets. You just never know what is going to work.


----------



## shannonswyatt (May 7, 2012)

I think you are right about the old wood Colino. I had 22 traps out this year, but the only box that got anything was an older but unused swarm trap in my backyard! I bait with wax and LGO, but when I pulled them down they still all smelled like fresh wood. I'm going to put the out for a while this fall and let them get a bit wet and then put them up for winter.


----------



## Colino (May 28, 2013)

Below is a link to my dropbox with some photos of my traps. All these were built with scavenged lumber discarded by a construction company, it's criminal what is wasted in our society. Also there are a couple of photos of my two hives and the pretty TBH I built but don't use.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/34l58y2kbcg9pil/OlZmxiIvXh


----------



## Colino (May 28, 2013)

Shannon:
Here is a thread that I found posted by Grant, about using Bee-Scent as an attractant. I managed to order a bottle because they ship to Canada. Get this, to get it to Canada I paid 17.00 for the Bee-Scent and 30.00 for shipping. But because it is 16 ounces it is cheaper for me to buy it than order the same amount of swarm lure from my supplier here.
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?250284-Swarm-lures&highlight=bee-scent


----------

