Sharon,
It is easy to see that you do not have a good understanding of honey bee
biology or
bee behavior.  I will, in a FEW words, explain a vital part of it, and
hopefully this
will be a beginning of your understanding of these most important things.

Unlike a KING or QUEEN, PRESIDENT, DICTATOR, PRIME MINISTER, or BOSS, honey
bees
have NO bee that is their leader, director, or boss.  The queen bee makes NO
decisions about anything, including swarming, how many eggs to lay, whether
they are to be drones or workers, or how much she eats.  All colony decisions
are made
by the worker bees as a group which has NO leader.  This is difficult for we
humans to understand, but it is "nature's way" with honey bees.  How do we
know this?
Some years ago, bee scientists and bee researchers removed many frames of
capped
brood from hives, kept them in an incubator at a temperature of about 93-94°,
and
observed the actions of each bee as they emerged from their cell and what they
did during the first few weeks of their lives.  These bees were raised in the
TOTAL
absence of any older worker bees.  It was found that these "incubated" bees
did
EVERY thing that a normal bee does and on the same time schedule as if it
were a normal bee.   This PROVED that bees did not have a boss, a leader to
show them "what" to do, "when" to do it, or "how" to do it, and that their
minds are "programed"
by GOD (nature) from the moment of their creation; and this has not changed
since days in the Garden of Eden, nor can man teach anything to a honey bee.
Worker
bees make ALL colony decisions and control the actions of the queen by HOW
MUCH they FEED her and WHEN they FEED her.  It is the workers that suffer the
congestion
of the brood chamber or the absence of storage space for nectar, so THEY make
preparations to swarm.  They build queen cells, make the queen lay eggs in
them,
minimize the feeding of the queen so she can lose weight so she can fly which
also practically stops the queen from laying eggs, and finalize the action by
literally
PUSHING the queen out of the hive and forcing her to join the swarm that is
settling
on a closeby tree limb or bush.

If the wings of a queen have been clipped, that has NO EFFECT WHAT-SO-EVER on
the
swarming impulse of the worker bees.  When the workers find that their mother
can't fly, they don't lose the impulse to swarm, but just wait until they can
get a queen who can fly.  Hence, they kill the old queen (their mother) and
wait until a
virgin queen emerges, and "push her out of the door" to swarm with them.  If
that
virgin queen was the only queen cell in the colony, the swarming act leaves
the
parent colony queenLESS.

Since you do not want to increase your colony population, you have to use
management techniques that aid in preventing swarming.  However, you must
realize
that swarming is the natural way of REPRODUCTION of honey bees and of
SPREADING
them over a wider geographic area than occupied by their parents.  Trying to
stop
honey bee swarming is not unlike trying to stop all human sex acts.

Some swarm management techniques are: Never allow a queen to live more than 24
months, 12 months is even better, because the younger the queen, the more
queen
pheromone she can daily produce that inhibits the natural urge of worker bees
to swarm, ALWAYS provide additional BROOD space and additional SUPER space
BEFORE
THE BEES HAVE NEED FOR IT, REVERSE your brood chambers several times in late
winter and early spring so that the empty laying space is ALWAYS above the
queen,
split a colony into two parts in mid spring and recombine them into a single
colony
in mid summer (after swarming season), and lastly, don't use bees that have a
high
propensity for swarming like Carniolans (which I have and prefer).

Sharon, I am sure that you had hoped for a one word answer or maybe a one
sentence
answer about preventing swarming.  "There just ain't any short answers".
Contrary
to some peoples thoughts, successful beekeeping requires both WORK and
THINKING
by a beeKEEPER.  Those that don't WORK or THINK usually are just beeHAVERS,
and
just can't KEEP bees.

Before I sign off, if you are in earnest to be a beeKEEPER and not just HAVE
bees,
you MUST be willing to LEARN honey bee management, bee behavior, and bee
biology.
No longer can you learn by attending the local meetings of bee associations
with
their tall-tale stories, "how Daddy kept bees", parties and door prizes.  I
suggest
you spend $30 and buy THE BEEKEEPER'S HANDBOOK by Dr. Diana Sammataro, 3rd
Edition printed in April 1998, which I (plus any others) consider the finest
bee
book ever written for beginners and novices; and than read and STUDY the 105
page
Chapter 8 by Dr. Norman Gary about bee behavior in the Extensively Revised
1992 Edition of The Hive and the Honey Bee.  So MUCH has changed since mites
were
first found in the U. S. in 1984 (just 17 years ago) because of the about of
scientific
bee research that has resulted in trying to find treatment for the mites as
well as
PMS, small hive beetles, resistant Foul Brood, public fear of bees caused by
the
1990 entrance of the Africanized bee into America, that books written before
about 1992 basically are obsolete because they do not cover these new problems
that have all started since the entrance of mites in 1984.  You can't use a
book about repairing your 1984 Chevrolet to fix a problem on your new 2001
Chevrolet
which has new things that did not exist in 1984 like a computerized ignition,
catalytic converter exhaust, and running on lead free gasoline.  You have to
KEEP UP
WITH THE TIMES.

I hope I have helped, and I apologize for the length of this note.

George Imirie
EAS Certified Master Beekeeper
69th year of beekeeping in Maryland
Author of George's Pink Pages