As a quick reminder, after leaving its hive a swarm will collect nearby at a bivouac location until, based on scout reports, it decides on a new home. Then it flies off to occupy it. Just as a bait hive or swarm trap is a lure for such occupation, the scion is a lure for bivouacking. In each case the lure is installed where it should be attractive to a swarm and convenient for the beekeeper. The common form of a scion consists of two pieces of wood, a flat roof piece and a centrally located, narrow, descending piece, and some sort of mounting hardware. The descender is covered in cloth that is impregnated with propolis, wax, and whatever smells welcoming to bees. The roof keeps rain from washing away the smells. And the mounting hardware is for hanging and removal of the scion. |
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We used a zipsaw with a plywood bit because ours had a circle-cutting jig. Such jigs are also available for sabersaw and router but the roof need not be a perfect circle or even a circle at all. The bees should not mind some plastic showing around the edges so even sawing a square is fine for the jigless. Centering the disc on the underside of the bucket lid we drilled through both at the mark left by our jig using a large enough drill bit to accommodate the largish eye screw that would be our mounting hardware. |
A thick dowel could also serve. We considered cutting an old broomstick handle but drilling the central hole would have been more challenging. Maybe not that much more since this does not need to be perfect either. A long descender is better for catching larger swarms but if too long will either keep the lid from closing the bucket or crush bees on the bucket bottom. Our overcomplicated way to maximize length was to first assemble the scion by screwing the eye screw through the holes in the bucket lid, plywood disc, and descender, in that order. Next we laid a tiny scrap of 3/4 inch plywood in the bottom of the bucket and dusted the top of the scrap with powdered chalk. Then we screwed our lid onto the bucket as far as we could. If it bottomed out against the plywood scrap, which we could tell by the dust on the end, then we trimmed a tiny bit off the descender and repeated the process until the end came up clean. At that point we, of course, returned the chalky scrap to our collection of little bits that would be thrown away if not for uses like these. |
The disc did not sit quite flat against the bucket lid and wobbled a bit so we added four small screws to hold it more securely. In hindsight they would hold better had we placed them further from center but they seem to be adequate for the job. |
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We then stapled some burlap around the descender and rubbed it heavily with the swarm lure we recently made. And finally we installed the scion outdoors, which will be covered in a future post. |
2021 May 18
Making a Scion
Posted by theprospectofbees under Uncategorized | Tags: beekeeping, Russian scion |1 Comment
2021 May 19 at 10:03
Oooooh, that looks convenient and bee-friendly.