> Has anybody calculated how long in advance of swarming bees take an > interest in a bait hive and add it to their list of possible new homes? Lindauer has observed that house hunting bees are former foragers. So perhaps 1 to 2 weeks prior to swarming, foragers would be aware of many available voids. This might explain why my traps near where I extract are my most successful at attracting swarms. Quote: Some...of the old, marked bees came back occasionally to [my] feeding table, but no longer as forager bees; they sipped only briefly at the sugar water, but they did not fly back immediately to the hive. Rather they began working in the neighborhood in a strange way: they sought nearby for dark holes and cracks, crawled into mouse holes in the ground and into deep cracks in the bark of trees, and finally inspected [my] two empty nesting boxes. There was no doubt about it: these former forager bees had become house-hunting bees." (emphasis Lindauer) Best Wishes, Joe Waggle http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/HistoricalHoneybeeArticles/ *********************************************** 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 Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at: http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm