They'll swarm if they want to swarm..regardless.

[SteveSC]

Last week I inspected my hives for queen cells ( found a few ) and got rid of them - added supers to the hives that looked to be getting crowded.  All looked good - bee working like mad.

Last Sat. the wife and I were re-staining the back deck and I heard a humming sound - a swarm came right over house at about 20' high - disappearing in the woods not to seen again.  I walked down to the bee yard to see what hive it had swarmed out of and there hanging off a bush was another swarm.  Two hives had swarmed.  I captured the second swarm and re-located it - the first swarm over the house is on it's own...  We were driving down the road about two hours later and drove right thru a swarm  - bees were bouncing off the front glass.  These weren't my bees - somebody else lost some. Swarms are everywhere...

They'll swarm when they want to swarm - you can try to avoid it but in the end it's up to the bees.....

[brit.thebee]

That's so scary!  I'm brand new and have become obsessive about running to the beeyard way too often to see if they're still home. 

[Scadsobees]

Yes, that is mostly true.  But the time to work on preventing swarms is about 6 weeks ago, for you.  And you can do a split when you find queen cells, although that doesn't always work either.  I had a swarm leave a hive that I had split about 2 weeks later...even though they were down to half what the original hive was.

It is a tricky problem figureing out all what to do, especially for beginners.  The best way to avoid a swarm is to make sure they are really weak coming out of the winter...and that sure isn't desirable either....

Rick

[livetrappingbymatt]

one season my hives wanted to swarm badly! i tried splitting them,twice and when they made the third set of cells new undrawn foundation was added 3 frames they finnally got the message.
bob

[Understudy]

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesswarmcontrol.htm


Sincerely,
Brendhan

[Michael Bush]

>Last week I inspected my hives for queen cells ( found a few ) and got rid of them - added supers to the hives that looked to be getting crowded.  All looked good - bee working like mad.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beeslazy.htm#stopcuttingswarmcells

By the time they had swarm cells there was no hope of heading them off.  The time to prevent swarming was two months ago.

[Brian D. Bray]

I'll say it again, bees making comb (especially in the brood chamber) will not swarm. 
If the hive develops swarm cells the best you can hope for is a split.
Getting the bees into building comb and keeping them building comb is one key to swarm control.
Keeping the hive from becoming honey bound or crowded is another key.
adding supers at the 80% full point is another.
There is no one thing a person can do to prevent a swarm, it requires a multi-pronged approach.

[papabear]

April 1st i inspected the hive and the hive was full of swarm cells. I did a split and they did fine. no swarming  Thank GOD.

[SteveSC]

I fed my bees heavy this past winter - they came into the spring with big #s and full bellies.  Maybe I fed them too much.  I think I brought them in the spring with populations too large and with the extra warm weather we had in the early spring they just had to swarm.. 
 
All my hives ( 10 ) were over wintered with doubles or singles w\super.  I had extra supers on most hives by April 1st.  They had plenty of room to expand - they were building comb in the supers - storing honey.  I didn't do any splits - trying to keep my hive #s to around 10.  Well , I've had 7 swarms in the last 2 weeks - 3 in one day.  Right now there's another big swarm ( #8 ) hanging two feet off the ground not 30 feet from the hives. 

I've captured 7 out of the 8 swarms - so much for keeping the # of hives down....  These hives are in a place where I can keep an eye on them so I know when they swarm. It's my opinion that alot of beekeepers have hives that swarm and they never no it - unless you're there ever day you'll probably miss the swarm.  You wouldn't have a reason to believe it swarmed in the first place except maybe you'd notice the bee #s decrease around the hive.....   Any ideas on this.?

[Scadsobees]

You can also re-combine the swarms with the parent hives if you want bees and honey but not more hives.

Rick

[SteveSC]

The last and only time I tried to re-combine it didn't work too well.  All the bees swarmed - the original swarm and the parent hive.  I'd like to re-combine this swarm I have today - it's a big swarm....

Are talking about the sheet of newspaper method...?