We have only one hive, but we are hoping to expand to two this year by luring a bee swarm into our empty hive box. If that doesn’t get you excited, I don’t know what will.
Bees give off all manner of pheromone for different purposes, and it turns out that a scent very near lemongrass oil (think Lemon Pledge furniture polish) is one that scout bees use to tell the swarm to “follow me to a good-looking hive cavity”. So we put a special slow-release plastic tube of lemongrass oil in an unused hive, and tonight I set the hive out next to our current one.
Bee hives swarm in the spring when they run out of room in their current hive. Typically some portion of the hive, with the old queen, gather together and leave the old hive, landing somewhere in a tree temporarily while scout bees make sorties to try to find a good place for the new hive. The scout bees return, do dances to tell the swarm how their spot looks, and the most vigorous dancer wins (or something like that). The bees all take off and occupy the new hive.
So we may get a swarm or we may not. We’ll see, but it’s fun to try it. The hive on the right is our current one, and the left hive is the swarm bait one:
Swarm bait hive and regular hive
