Swarmit Leaflet Swarm Hiving. Swarm Collecting. Comb trapping frame.		"A-Z" INDEX &   SEARCH Swarm Lures or Pheromone Lures for the Attraction of Honey Bee Swarms into Bait Hives Pheromone Lures can be used to increase the likelihood of capturing swarms or retaining them in your own hives.

Some are commercially available... And others can be prepared at home. In the case of the commercially available 'Swarmit' brand the lure is a synthetic pheromone that mimics the nasanov scent.

Swarmit is a commercially prepared swarm attractant that mimics nasanov pheromone. It is a compound that is sealed in a small plastic tube and the vapour permeates the plastic at a very slow rate allowing a slow release of active swarm lure chemical over a four to six week period (depending on temperature). The swarm lure has an attractive action that is the equivalent of 5,000 worker bees fanning and scenting. During storage inside its foil sachet a saturated vapour equilibrium is set up between the air in the sachet and the air in the lure, thus the swarm attractant stays fresh in storage. I have used this product to entice swarms into skeps and boxes and have stored the plastic phial in a small glass jar with a metal screw cap between uses.

Swarm lure made from unwanted queens... This method came from Dee Lusby and was developed from an idea of Butler.

Dee's method... Is to take unwanted queens, not old ones that are about to expire, but viable young or virgin specimens and steep them in a jar of alcohol. Dee comments "The alcohol really takes on a good color if left for years with queens submerged within. Also, we get more scouting bees with virgin queen lure and more drones in swarms that are eventually hived."

To use this "tincture of virgin queen" as a lure, it is dabbed on woodwork of bait hives... Three or four drops from an eye dropper when the bait hive is made up and a few more drops after six weeks.

The oil from lemon or lime peel of freshly picked fruits can be rubbed on the inside faces of a bait hive and in some parts of the world this is all that is done... The rest of the box being completely empty.

Beeswax itself is an attractant and can be melted on to, or rubbed over inside faces of a box. Honey, propolis and slum gum have also been used for baiting purposes.

Recipe for Artificial Pheromone

To use this mixture... Take a small vial filled with cotton wool wadding or other absorbent material. Absorb approximately 1 ml of the concentrate into the filling and plug the mouth with a rubber bung. At time of use remove the bung and place the vial just inside the entrance of the swarm box.

the pheromone compound my be absorbed into a matrix or mixed with wax or plastic in the liquid state so that the resulting solid can be used as a lure. In the case of wax the block may be rubbed across the grain of a wooden surface to render a hive box more attractive.

Generated... 19 December 2001, Revised... Sometime in 2003, Upgraded... 12 June 2006,