# Banking on a swarm?



## Joe Nelson (Apr 24, 2014)

I want to start beekeeping. I am setting up my hives. Can one bank on trapping swarms entirely to populate his beehives? There is a large commercial bee operation about 2 miles from me and I have a friend who lives within a 1/4 mile. I would put an ad on Craigslist, but do not desire to get up on ladders.


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## Adam Foster Collins (Nov 4, 2009)

You can never bank on swarms. You can certainly better your odds by putting out multiple traps and ads for collecting swarms, but you're still going on chance.

Adam


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## awebber96 (May 28, 2012)

Swarm catching is like fishing. I'm a pretty good fisherman, but I've never not had a back-up plan for dinner after a day of fishing.


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## mathesonequip (Jul 9, 2012)

if you do not have bees now then even if you get swarms you will not have anything to build up the swarms. some of time the swarm will not have a good queen or may be weak, better to deal with this if you have bees already. last winter was nasty locally, some experienced beekeepers lost all they had. a couple of good beekeepers I know planed on restocking with swarms, no luck at all. they are ordering packages after a year with "0" bees. swarms are great but far from a sure thing in many places..... it is a well known scientific fact that the best way to get a lot of swarms is to be unprepared with no equipment, a broken ladder, lost smoker, broken down pick-up and a bee suit ripped to shreds. if you meet these conditions you might get swarms and stung.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

Joe Nelson said:


> I want to start beekeeping. I am setting up my hives. Can one bank on trapping swarms entirely to populate his beehives? There is a large commercial bee operation about 2 miles from me and I have a friend who lives within a 1/4 mile. I would put an ad on Craigslist, but do not desire to get up on ladders.


Everyone I talked to around here (meaning where I live, not Bee Source) said "there are no swarms". Even after that awful winter we had, I caught five swarms. Showed up a bit late for a couple other ones. And had numerous opportunities to do cut-outs if I wanted to. Can you bank on it, no. But if you craft up a decent Craigslist Ad, I'd be willing to bet you could get a call. 

Trapping is something I don't know squat about. I have some brood comb saved that I am going to use in some nucs this year and place a couple of them around the places we keep our bees in case one get out of the hive (which I'm sure will happen if any survive the winter). I only had to get up on a ladder for two swarms. One of them was just a bit too odd of an angle to do from the crotch of the cherry tree they were in, otherwise I got one about 5' on someones light post in their front yard and two off of this post:


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## Mr.Beeman (May 19, 2012)

Banking on swarms....... short answer, no way.
Two springs ago I was hammered with swarm calls (18-20) best guesstimate.
Last spring....3. Three swarm calls that were 45 minutes away.
I set out ten traps, got two. One was soooo small I had to combine it with another hive that was queenless.
Bad year for bees.


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## shannonswyatt (May 7, 2012)

I've put up traps for the past two years, and I have gotten a swarm each of the two years. But both times they landed in a hive in my backyard that wasn't specifically setup as a trap. The first hive was empty, the second had some combs from a previous deadout that I had planned on using in some of my swarm traps as we hit prime swarm season. So while I am happy for the swarms I have received, I would have to say my results were not expected and I thought for sure that I would have gotten some more swarms in some of the other locations. If I don't do any better this year I may give up on putting them up in the future. I had to pull down some of traps this year when they got put into Nuc duty.


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