What do I do when I’m waiting for spring to come?  Build swarm traps!  I’ve recently gotten in to bee keeping, perhaps obsessed, and I find myself reading or watching videos on bee’s nonstop. I highly suggest going down that rabbit hole and checking out bees!   Anyway, one of the things in those internet findings were other apiarists saying: “why buy bees, when you can catch them”.  So… that’s my mission for this spring.  I built these 2 swarm traps and I’m going to try to catch bee’s splitting from their hives in early spring.  Bee’s naturally swarm when a colony gets too big and they search for a new home.  That’s where I come in and become a bee landlord.  “Free Rent, get you’re free rent here”.  I’ll will follow up in March/April hopefully with a few new friends.  But for now, here are the free room and board I’ll be luring my new tenants into.  I probably over painted them (I know I did).  And I definitely added some features I haven’t seen on other traps, like the hinge locks (for securing the trap and easy access to the swarm).  But they were a lot of fun to build and I’ll be building more.  There’s a bit more technical aspects I need to do when I install them to actually catch bee’s, but I’ll mention those if/when I catch a swarm.  Until then, I used my stencils and old vinyl I had left over from other jobs to paint them.  I also have some new hives I’ll be painting and posting in the next few months for anyone who wants to see what an artist will do to their hives.  Lastly, I got this sweet tattoo from Andre Burton a few weeks ago.  He put a fundraiser on for the bee conservatory and I had to treat myself and the bees!  Check him out if you’re looking for some ink.