In Morrowind (if I recall correctly) there was no point enchanting Soul Trap on a bow as the bow itself did not kill, it was the arrow shot by the bow. Hence soul trap should only be cast on melee weapons for it to work as intended.
What about Skyrim? I play as an archer/mage mostly as use melee only when the enemy gets too close and I can't open up the distance.

I enchanted my ebony bow with soultrap and it works fine. I even made the enchantment so that if the enemy dies within 2 seconds it traps soul. Works a charm

Not a drama go for it.

It works the same as in Oblivion where the damage came from the bow and some arrows. Soul Trap works on Bows in Skyrim. I use it all the time to make cheap petty gems.

It works. You can't do anything to arrows anyway; even poison is applied to the bow.

Ok, thanks for the replies. Different game mechanics, I guess.

I miss enchanted arrows.

I think the soul trap animation is pretty funky, used it for the first time on my supple ancient Nordic bow the other night, yeah...funky

1 second gives you SOOO many uses, and when your dropping people with one shot like its going out of fashion you don't really need any longer.

and i do love the black star

Even if you don't one-shot things a 1 second Soul Trap on a bow will work. Even if you whittle something down slowly and pause before the last shot, it still works every time to trap the soul. The only reason I can see using longer than 1 second on any Soul Trap enchant is in case you wanted to 'debuff' a target with a crummy soul trap (iron etc) weapon and then switch to your good weapon to kill it really quickly.

That seems to be unecessary stress to me. For example I just have two Glass Maces right now (Legendary of course!) one with Absorb Health and the other with a 1 sec Soul Trap enchant (which means an absurd 850+ charges). Its never been easier to farm Soul Gems and now with the Black Star (whoohoo) its even better.

BTW what happens if you don't take the broken star to the mage for the Black Star and instead return it to the priestess at the shrine? I'm assuming you just get the old Azura's Star which is still a Grand but can't take human souls? Seemed to me that normal Grand Soul gems are easy to get where as Black ones are not and you spend a lot of time fighting humanoids... so the Black Star was a no brainer choice for me. But I'm curious as to what happens if you go the other way.

It does work fine in skyrim. Always use 1 second soul trap as well, it will always work and you will get more charges.