Hi Bee people:
 
I have been reading all this good ideas about how to control/prevent a
colony to swarm. All of them are excellent, but I think the back-bone of the
problem has not been discussed yet. This is genetics.
We first have to recall that most apis mellifera behaviour is not learnt,
but rather have a very high genetic component.
And swarming behaviour is not the exception, I belive that swarming in
european bees and absconding behaviour in african bees are controled by
highly correlated genes (if not the same!!)
Therefore we must be aware that we are responsible for the continuation of
the swarming problem in our bees. This is, we usualy make our splits from
colonies that are about to swarm or already did. Some of us increase the
number of colonies from feral colonies who may have a high tendency to swarm
(otherwise they were not feral).
How many of us bother to replace the queens from those swarms?
How many of us rear queens from colonies that didn't show a tendency to
swarm the past seasson?
We should be fair then, and not blame the poor creatures of a behaviour we
are encouraging somehow.
Open to feedback or comments....
 
 
 
Mauricio Montes
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Brisbane, Australia