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Well, typically the recommendation for a swarm trap is that it is best to have them facing a field and around 10-15 feet up in the air. As most hive boxes are assembled in multiple pieces and become quite heavy once a swarm moves in, it would be very difficult to climb a tree or ladder as well as attempt to pull the 50-100 lb hive out of the tree. Furthermore, as swarm traps have to be moved at night (because that is when all your bees move into a hive), it is a little more difficult to do all this in the dark while also attempting to occlude the hive entrance in order to prevent the bees from coming out in transit. Granted, I am new to all of this to be sure, but these may be the reasons that the vast majority of the industry uses smaller boxes with fewer frames for trapping. Thank you for the recommendation!

Yep, the idea of the experiment was to see if the entire system can run independent from power and from manual watering. Also, being that water only goes to the intended plants, we use less water (or making the collected rain water go further), and we also have to deal with fewer weeds as its harder for them to grow when water only goes to the intended plants.

Hello! Thanks for the question! We do have a shade that we are intending to use (as we will actually likely need to use it soon). We are hoping it will further help in reducing unwanted evaporation. If you have any other recommendations of things we could implement or haven't thought of, please be sure to let us know. Again, this really is a learning experience for us at this point. It would be so much easier to fail now without the loss of large expenses than to fail later when we have made much larger investments into more permanent structures!

Yeah, I was worried about kickback with it for sure! Had to make sure I was standing way over to the side just in case it happened! Thank you all for watching. Hopefully it doesn't make you cringe too much!

Good Afternoon! Is there an email address through which I can contact you?

@@NarrowPathLife Did you get my response? I haven't received an email.

@@a.j.stenbeck1852 No, It appears that your response did not go through. Can you post your email address in response to this comment?

@Narrow Path Life Now did it work?

I am still unable to see a reply to this comment thread with your email address. Are you able to see it when viewing the comments?

I don't know what it is, but it seems like time is so short for us and the little time we do have seems to slip right through our fingers! Hopefully one day we will get to the point where we can just slow down and relax.

Thank you for watching! This is our third year taking care of bees. We are really quite new to this whole process, but one thing we were REALLY successful with was trapping. We go into a bit more depth in another video (link below): m.th-cam.com/video/uNR9jnhXkJ0/w-d-xo.html I will say, I have really enjoyed taking care of bees. We try to take a relatively hands off approach to them and are a little more interested in propagating strong strains of bees rather than maximizing production at the cost of everything else. This approach has made things quite enjoyable. Even if you just have two hives (which I recommend having no less than two), I really recommend you dip your toes into it.

Thanks for the tip! I'll have to give that a try. This is our 3rd year with honey bees so we are just learning. Any other tips that any of the experienced keepers have, I am open ears!

@@NarrowPathLife we're in our 3rd year too, so we'll just have to learn together.

Sounds like a plan to me!

Thanks! It was enough work that I really need a break from welding for a while. I think it was about 4 medium sized tanks of gas to get it done.

Haha! Yeah, me either! I'm tired of working on it!

Some strains seem to be more aggressive than others. They can also be more aggressive depending on the season. It seems that they tend to be worse just coming out of winter as they are low on honey and are a little more desperate to protect it. In this video, they really weren't too bad. When I first see activity in front of a hive, it is usually scout bees coming in to investigate the space. If they find it suitable, they will go back to the hive to get the others. I usually wait until I can see them moving inside the hive at night (assuming I missed the big swarm event). Once I see them moving in the hive at night, I like to give them a couple of days to get established and that's when I transport them.