Our experience in preventing swarming

[Ukrainian beekeeper]

Hello. We are from Ukraine. We want to share our experience on stopping swarming. Sorry for bad english. We are interested in what you think about this method.
Here is my first video in English on our channel. If you want, you can see it Or read the description below. I wonder what you think about this method and whether I need to further translate our videos into English.
https://youtu.be/-3TNhYEWeDI

\Method of prevent swarming ?Castling?.
You make an inspection of bees. For any reasons you do it later than you need. During the inspection found, that bees-colony is in before swarming situation and can fly out at any moment. You can see it on such grounds:
1) swarming queen cells;
2) queen do not lay eggs;
3) brood is sealed everywhere.
That means that bees haven`t job. If you see it all, your bees will fly out at any moment. Apply here method ?Castling?.
Let`s denote hive of swarming bees like A. At this hive find a queen and isolate her for the time of next manipulations. Next we reduce a bees colony by making splits. Number of splits depends on the strength of the bees colony in hive A. For example, there are 20 frames in the hive A. It is 100 %/ We make 2 splits. Put 25% (5 frames in our example) with queen cells and sealed brood in the hive with split. And make the same with next 5 frames. Also, put frames with open brood in the splits from any other hive. Now you have 2 splits and there are 50 % (10 frames) in the hive A.
Next take a hive with normal bees colony, which do not swarming. Lets denote it B. At the hive B take find a queen and isolate her for the time of next manipulations.
From hive A take bigger part of frames (in our example 6 frames) with bees and put them in hive B. From hive B take the same number of frames with open brood and bees and put it in hive A. The number of frames with bees which are swarming in hive A must be less than number of frames with normal bees which we puted in this hive from hive B, because bees are subordinate to most. In result, we have 4 frames with swarming bees and 6 frames with normal bees. There are more normal bees then swarming bees in hive A. That why bees colony must to stop swarming. When queen begin lay eggs we know exactly that the bees colony no more swarming.
If you want to avoid fights between bees during all manipulations you need sprinkle bees solution with the smell of wormwood, mint or sprinkle them with flour. Bees in booth hive must have the same smell.

[Hops Brewster]

Welcome to Beemaster.  Your English is certainly better than my Ukrainian or Russian 

This is the first time I have ever seen any reference to using wormwood in beekeeping.  Am I correct in understanding that you're using it as an aromatic, to balance the hive smells?  What is the purpose of the flour?

[Ukrainian beekeeper]

  Thank you!
In Ukraine we often use wormwood tincture in beekeeping (wormwood  or In Latin Artemisia)
Here is a picture https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%BE%D0%BB%D1%8B%D0%BD%D1%8C_%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%8C%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%8F#/media/File:Artemisia_absinthium_P1210748.jpg
Wormwood tincture we use for the prevention of nosematosis ( one tablespoon per liter of honey syrup)
We use flor and water with wormwood ( one-two tablespoon per liter of water) as an aromatic, to balance the smells of bees during  the interchange of frames with bees from the hive A to the hive B. Because bees with different hives can fight when we use method  Castling.

[mtnb]

Interesting. Thank you for that UB.

[Jim134]

This is something you may like.


         BEE HAPPY Jim 134 

[Ukrainian beekeeper]

Welcome to Beemaster.  Your English is certainly better than my Ukrainian or Russian 

This is the first time I have ever seen any reference to using wormwood in beekeeping.  Am I correct in understanding that you're using it as an aromatic, to balance the hive smells?  What is the purpose of the flour?

  Thank you!
In Ukraine we often use wormwood tincture in beekeeping (wormwood  or In Latin Artemisia)
Here is a picture https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%BE%D0%BB%D1%8B%D0%BD%D1%8C_%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%8C%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%8F#/media/File:Artemisia_absinthium_P1210748.jpg
Wormwood tincture we use for the prevention of nosematosis ( one tablespoon per liter of honey syrup)
We use flor and water with wormwood ( one-two tablespoon per liter of water) as an aromatic, to balance the smells of bees during  the interchange of frames with bees from the hive A to the hive B. Because bees with different hives can fight when we use method  Castling.

[Michael Bush]

Causes of swarming:
  Overcrowding
  Urge to Reproduce

[Oldbeavo]

So right Michael, but the timing of depopulating seems critical or the urge to swarm will take over. We have taken brood and bees out of hives and still had them swarm.
We tried to remove  the queen and put here with brood in a nuc. this worked but a lot of the hives we removed queens from did not requeen for some reason. It was a shocking spring with a lot of wet days interrupting honey flow but when inspecting hive later that were queenless they were hives we removed queens from.
Also the question of how hard to depopulate, but still have the hive productive through spring, we usually work on removing half the brood and nurse bees with a few workers.