Swarm Traps and Nuk

I thought some of you might enjoy seeing the new nuk beehive and the swarm traps I made.

 Here is the new nuk entirely made by myself mostly from scrap lumber. I did buy a 1 x 12 to make the deep body. The roof top is left over aluminum flashing. The bees are getting adjusted as I only saw a few of them coming and going today. The glass jar is a boardman sugar water feeder.

 Here is my home made swarm trap. I found 10 pcs of 3/8" plywood 10" x 36" in the clean wood pile at the landfill, enough to make 4 bodies as shown here. The bottoms and tops were from left overs in my wood shed. To hang it seevthat board sticking up in the back is the mounting strip, one can screw it to a tree. The house stain was left over from a house we painted a few years ago. So the only things I had to buy was the frames, foundation, wood glue and staples.

 Here is the inside of the swarm trap. I drilled 4 small holes in the bottom in case it gets wet inside. It is hard to see the cleats made from 2 x 4 cut offs hold up the frames and foundation.

Here is one of my swarm traps attached to a tree 12 foot up in the air. Both traps had 4-6 bee scouts  investigating them today! Been told these swarm lures can be detected by bees up to 1'4 mile away.

I checked the two beehives in the near by meadow today, one going strong the other not so strong.

Just heard my first bullfrog of the year a minute ago! Also found my first dragonflies and damselflies today. Had a Blue Corporal flying over the pond, a Common Green Darner hovering over the garden path and a mystery dragon fly being chased by a duskywing butterfly.

 Oh yeah then there was the Rat Snake, yes a Rat Snake. I was in the basement with the door open working on a stained glass project. I moved to the glass grinder and on the floor was a 2 ft Rat Snake was crawling by, I tried to grab it and it took off. So somewhere in our little basement is a snake hunting some of the mice in there. Hope to spend at least an hour in there tomorrow working on my project maybe it'll slip outside like a good snake.