>>Unexpected result was control of swarming!

I did a few drone comb removal cycles on 130 hives this past spring, before the honey supers became too heavy to lift.  I don't know that I noticed reduced swarming this year (30% of my hives swarmed even though they had been split!), but I did catch the hives that wanted to swarm before the swarms actually left (helpful so that I knew to get them a new queen the following week).  It was easy to see, since the drone frames would always have swarm cells on them.  Hives that were not getting ready to swarm would have some cells of fresh eggs in the drone comb which made non-swarming hives easy to distinguish (I took partially-full supers off hives that were preparing to swarm and gave them to the non-swarming hives).

--Jeremy Rose
San Luis Obispo, CA

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