>>...a stubborn bunch of lazy bees... They are festooning all over 
the outside... and wrapping around the sides at night. They have no 
room to store the honey they are robbing!

It does not sound like lazy bees to me at all. :)  You provided them 
with limited room and yet they are still trying to store more honey!  
There is nothing lazy about this behavior.  I'd give them extra 
supers.

You will find it hard to find lazy bees in general.  Unmotived 
perhaps (by restricted room, no nectar flow but plenty of stores) but 
not lazy.

>>Crowding is said to trigger swarms, so why will they not swarm? 

You may be past the reproductive swarm cut-off date for your area 
and, if there is not a good flow on, they may not want to generate a 
crowding swarm.  Especially if you have a young queen and genetics 
not prone to swarming in the first place.  A desirable trait indeed 
as Gavin said.

Is it your goal to force them to swarm - why? You also mentioned 
rain - rainy weather can delay swarm issue for a few days.

>>This has been going on for many weeks.  It's rather embarrasing. 
When it rains, they get soaked and some die. The returning foragers 
have trouble digging their way through this mass of bodies to get 
inside.

Do you see any pollen coming in?  If not, there may not be a queen.  
Sometimes it happens: a productive queen will perish and the colony 
fails to replace her with a mated new queen.  The result is lots of 
bees for a while with no eggs for a new queen.

>>I am a novice breeder in Florida. Is there anything I can do to 
encourage them to swarm, short of pulling the queen frame?

Not sure what you mean by the queen frame.  If you are not trying to 
induce a swarm, I'd check the hive for queen presence (eggs, very 
young larvae or the queen itself).

If you are a bit apprehensive about inspecting the very populous 
hive, you can move the hive to a new location and leave a bait hive 
(1 deep with a couple of frames of open brood and foundation) at the 
old address.  When the flying bees settle down at the old address, 
you'll have a nice depopulated hive to inspect 1 or 2 days later.

[BTW, you can reduce the bee density in the hive by putting extra 
boxes on.  It makes inspecting so much easier when the bees are not 
boiling out of the boxes.]

For long term management, you could split this hive (by a walk-away 
split for instance) or throw extra supers on to give them more room 
if you are not interested in an extra colony.

The bees are not the problem.

Waldemar 

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