Last year my long langstroth hive swarmed before the honey flow. This year I worked hard to put off swarming by constantly adding empty, foundationless frames within broodnest, thereby keeping it open.
Yesterday, just as our honey flow is about to begin (April-May), one of my long langstroth colonies swarmed, and the other two have queen cells already being filled with jelly.
Question 1.
Is this the best I can do, at this point?
Hive A- Found queen cells, but not the queen. I created two nucs with queen cells, one for me and one for a friend. It's a good, clean, gentle hive.
Hive B- Found the Queen and queen cells. I created a nuc, taking the Queen with it, and moved it to a different spot in the yard (simulating a swarm, I hope). Also I created a 2nd nuc with queen cells for that same friend.
Hive C- It already swarmed, so I left it alone. I didn't even go into it. It was a dirty, cranky colony anyway. I will be good to have a new queen.
Question 2.
Did the colonies swarm because they had too large of a poplulation, IN SPITE OF my faithfully adding empty frames within the broodnest, or did the colonies swarm because they had too large of a poplulation, BECAUSE OF my faithfully adding empty frames within the broodnest?
They each had around 17-20 deep frames with brood on them (Some were partial frames). There were a lot of bees in each hive.
But that means to put off swarming, I not only have to keep the broodnest open, but I have to also constantly knock back the population by creating nucs.
In other words, instead of inserting empty frames between brood frames, I have to REPLACE brood frames with empty frames.
I don't have room to keep creating nucs. I live in a subdivision. Just how many nucs do you create off each hive in the spring to keep the population from maxing/swarming before the honey flow kicks in? Does every beek have this issue with every hive, the balance between having enough space, but not allowing the population to get too big?