On Tue, 8 Jul 1997, j h & e mcadam wrote:
 
> >Its July and the tempertures are in the mid 90s. I have noticed lots of
> >bees on the front of one of my hives but not the others. I have 5 hives.
> >I wondering if adding another super or leaving a space with space between
> >the hive cover and top super would help in cooling this hive. Is there a
> >chance that hive may swarm?
>
> If the bees have have mostly filled the super, it is time to add another
> one.  It is also advisable to check the queen is laying well as bees
> clustering when other hives are working may be a symptom of queen trouble.
>
>   Hello Betty and All,
 
  Bee populations this spring and summer in western Washington USA have
been very high. We have been having rain about 90% of the time and the
bees could not fly.The queen keeps laying and very few were dieing , do to
no flight.
 A friend told me that he had 19 calls in 2 days to pick up swarms.I
helped out a couple of 2 year beekeepers that thought, just putting on
another box would stop the swarming. The problem is congestion  in the
bottem box. Remove a couple frames with brood and put it in the center of
the top box. The bees that they had swarming were new starts this
year.Also check the bottem box frames for drone brood comming off of the
bottem bar of the frames.That can reduce the air flow in the hive. I had a
few of my hives that looked almost solid with very little bee space
looking from the bottem up.
  I have had some of my hives swarm. Do to the weather , I have not
checked them as close as normal. I have 180 hives and it has been a chore
to keep up with the bees this year. The weather that we are having in
western Washington this year , may be natures way to replenish the feral
colonies.We don't like to loose our bees to swarming , but it is the
reason we still have bees on this Earth.They have been around for a long
time and they are needed to keep nature in balance.If you loose a swarm
now and then , it is helping Mother Earth to get back into balance. We
can't change Nature , we can only observe and try to understand it as we
take our journey through life. Bees are wonderful creatures and we are
very blessed to be beekeepers. We see nature more as a whole as we learn
more about our bees.We will never understand everything about Honey
Bees.We just get bits and pieces and they are all wonderful.
 
 Best Regards
 Roy