--- On Thu, 4/29/10, Bill Greenrose <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
I am trying them (Styrofoam boxes) as swarm traps, too, with lemongrass EO, but had no
luck last year.
I tried using lemon grass oil in another way this past week. I mixed two drops in with two gallons of sugar syrup that I was feeding the packages I installed. As long as the queens were in their shipping cages everything was fine, the bees had just started drawing out the foundation. But, as soon as the queens were freed, about three days or so, they were GONE!! ABSCONDED!! Nuc EMPTY!! I did retrieve one group of bees. Seemed the queen couldn't fly very far and they were in a clump on the ground. Took two days to get them back in the hive. The first day, no matter how much I poked around in the pile I couldn't find the queen. Finally, after a heavy rain, with the pile still on the ground, I poked around and found her. She was a dinky thing, not much bigger than her retinue which was why I had a difficult time finding her. While installing her back in the nuc, sans sugar syrup/lemon oil, I marked her with blue paint.
Anyway, I'm thinking it was the addition of lemon oil to the syrup that made the bees abscond. Won't be doing that again. Was an expensive lesson.
Mike in LA
***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html
Access BEE-L directly at:
http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A0=BEE-L
|
