Every year since we've been keeping honeybees; even before we started our beekeeping adventures; we were interested in capturing swarms of bees. Over the years, we've tried swarm trapping using various bait hives - from buckets, to boxes, to flowerpots. To be honest, we've had really good luck catching our "prey" with just about every swarm trap that we've put out in our area here in north Texas. Through time and experience, we've come to learn a great deal about what works for us. We still try new approaches and techniques yearly, some of which we add to our bag of tools. 

We've made a few videos on our swarm traps and some successes along the way and put them on our Two Doves Bees and Gardens YouTube channel. Many people have been interested in how we put our flower pot swarm traps together and you can see it here:

 Here are a few photos of some of the swarm trap (bait hives) that we've used and experimented with over the years.

When spring rolls around, you can bet that we'll be out there waiting for some swarms to visit our bait hives. We give those "free bees" a new home and hope they stick around and find the new "digs" we provide a great home.