My winter hobby has been building traps to catch wild bee swarms, come this spring.
I started keeping bees last spring with two hives from a relative, and have been trying to make this as mustachian a hobby as possible, as in, buying as little of the gear as possible and making as much as possible myself.
So, I built a whole bunch of beehives last year, but still only have the original two colonies. In theory, those two colonies should be splittable this year into at least two more, and if they do well, possibly more than that.
However, I still have a bunch of extra hives, so I'll need more bees to fill them. Thus, the swarm catchers. Every spring, bees in the wild will suddenly up and take off, with the queen, and fly away from their old homes, leaving a small bunch behind to raise a new queen. Those free swarms buzz around looking for likely places to live. The theory is that they will see the nice, cozy boxes I made and fly in and remain, happily making honey.
Depending on location, and how many bees live in the neighborhood, this may or may not work. At any rate, it's keeping me busy. I'll be ecstatic if I get even just one. Oldtimers amongst beekeepers claim to catch many swarms a year. I guess this is at this point mere potential badassity, and not yet the real thing.
