Catching Feral Bees
Last month I posted about building swarm traps for ferrel bees. You can read about that here.
I am very fortunate to work out of a small airport in central Louisiana. We have a runway that is just less than a mile long with a parallel taxiway to service it. This requires a wide open area that the Parish/County maintains, in other words, mows regularly. The mowing isn't so often as to suppress the growth of wildflowers, rather it promotes their abundance.
At this time of year the ferrel bees abandon the feeders I supply for them and begin, in earnest, the pollination of these blossoms.
This is the perfect time to bait and set my swarm traps. This year I have seven to put out, I set two at home and the other five I planned to put at the airport.
This weekend I loaded all my traps and spent the morning setting them on the west side of the taxiway, with them facing east, just inside the tree line.
I know there are several wild hives in this area. There are over 1200 acres of wildflowers and blossoming trees for the insects to feed on.
I baited the boxes with waxed frames and lemon grass oil as described in the previous post.
With any luck I'll catch swarms starting in about two weeks and continuing into July.
Free bees and already acclimated to the local area! It's supposed to be an easy process. We shall see if I can fill theses new hives!
