Allen wrote:
>...
>Don't get swarming started:
 
here are some more ideas about this, from a hobbiest perspective:
 
Supering early helps.  If you super over an excluder, though, sometimes the
colony won't readily use the added space, and they will keep getting more
congested below.   Supposedly, if you reverse the brood-boxes and add the
excluder/supers at the same time, this tends to put brood right under the
excluder, so the bees "have" to go thru and start using the space above.
It doesn't always work out so well, though.  Sometimes you go back in a
couple of weeks and they have stored their nectar in the brood chamber,
with little or no progress in the honey supers, and there are scads of
queen cells already!  Omitting the excluder will usually prevent this lag,
if you can tolerate a bit of brood in the first honey-super, initially
anyway.
 
>*  Keep young queens in the hives
 
Interesting to me that Walter Kelley, in his bee books, didn't have much to
say about swarm control methods.  His recommendations were more towards
just having queens less than a year old in the colonies, relying on this
re-queening as a swarm-control measure.  (But then too, he was selling
queens ;-))
 
>*  Give lots of supers (including some foundation) well before the flow
 
IME, a super of foundation above a double-brood chamber and excluder is
usually ignored for too long,  which can be frustrating.  You give them a
nice new super like that and next thing you know they are taking off!  It
often helps to super first with drawn comb, and then set subsequent supers
w/ foundation underneath it.  Someone once told me, "Keep a super ahead of
the bees" and this seems to be a good rule of thumb at least up into the
middle of the main flow (mid-late summer here).
 
 
>*  Remove honey before the hives get plugged
 
Once you know when to expect the main nectar flows, you can keep an eye on
the super space, and pull honey or add supers as necessary, to maintain a
margin of extra storage room.  Many beekeepers will keep this up until a
late-summer or autumn flow, and then let the bees "plug" a good portion of
the brood chamber(s) with that honey for winter.  Problem is, it can end up
reducing the queen's laying space at a time when you want the max. eggs
being laid to supply the winter bees.  Some places (like here in NY) you
can have colonies happily swarming in Aug. or Sept. if they congest the
brood nest like that.  Each year is different, so it's hard to predict
whether they will get too plugged, and how early.
 
I wonder about the artificial swarming methods, in that the original colony
SANS queen would take several weeks to build back up once their new queen
starts laying.  The artificial swarm (on the old stand, with old queen) has
very little brood initially, and so its population drops off pretty fast
once the field bees start dwindling.  Yes, swarming is thwarted, but it
results in two weaker colonies going into the summer flows.  (If the two
units are re-united soon after the artificial swarming, maybe this would
result in a strong colony again, going into the main part of the season.
Anyone comment(?))
 
When artificial swarming is followed as a routine, there is also the
possibility or risk of "swarming" a colony that would never has swarmed if
left alone anyway.  They end up all discombobulated, then, when they could
have gone on producing without interruption.
 
I s'pose manipulations like artificial swarming are at least better than,
say, tearing thru the colony every 10 days to destroy queen cells.  Now
that's a major intrusion -- can't believe I used to do it!  I certainly got
some big swarms regardless.
 
cheers,
JG
 
 
 
 
 
>
>If swarming appears to be started:
>
>*  Split the hive in half and super each half (make sure there are
>   good cells in each half)
>*  Padgen the hive (Ie. switch it with a weaker one that looks
>   about the same and/or face it backwards if it is in a line of hives.
>   BTW, padgening will not work if the bees are not flying freely and
>   they may not be if they are swarmy.
>
>That's about it.
>
>Remember that bees will swarm no matter what you do, other than weaken
>them beyond usefulness.  All we can do is reduce swarming, not eliminate
>it.  It is completely natural.
>
>An occasional swarm is not the sign of poor beekeeping.  No swarming is.
>
>Allen
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