Ian Watson wrote:
 
> ...  The problem is this:  there are already swarm cells and
> they are at the stage where they are finished, as in
> closed at the bottom.
 
I too was surprised to find sealed queen cells in a few hives yesterday.
It certainly is an early season in these parts (upstate NY).
 
A sealed queen cell can be anywhere between 1 and 13 days old.  However,
once your bees are to the point of sealing cells, it's a safe bet
they're gonna swarm and you need to take preventative measures.  Cutting
out the cells is a delay tactic at best.  Splitting is a better idea,
but you still may run into problems with one of your splits swarming.
Introducing a new queen to the queenless split may not interrupt the
brood rearing sufficiently to thwart the swarming impulse.
 
You will be better off playing with the swarming impulse rather than
fighting it.  Manage your bees such that they cast a swarm on your
schedule rather than their's.  This is a classic situation to make a
shook swarm!
 
Take the frame on which the queen is laying and place it in a deep hive
body with 9 frames of foundation.  Add empty supers (at least two) with
only foundation frames above a queen excluder on the new hive.  Move the
original hive more than three feet away, but in the same vicinity and
place the new hive on the original site.  The field bees will all return
to the original site, now the new hive, which should be augmented with
bees from the original hive by shaking the bees from half to two thirds
of the frames in front of the new hive.  Imperative in the shaking
exercise is that you leave enough bees in the original hive to care for
the remaining brood.  This new hive will draw the foundation at an
AMAZING rate!
 
Cut out all but two of the queen cells in the original hive to let the
bees raise a new queen.  The original hive will recover quickly (it is
probably jammed with brood) and will likely produce at least a super,
perhaps two - queen excluder not necessary but recommended.  These units
can be combined in late summer for fall preparation.
 
Now, I have summarized in 30 lines a topic on which many authors have
written entire books.  Some will recommend that the
Recommended reading: _The_New_Comb_Honey_Book_
by Richard Taylor and _Swarming:_It's_Causes_and_Control_ by L.E.
Snelgrove.
 
Aaron Morris - I think, therefore I bee!