This is my 4th spring as a beek, and my hives are long langstroths.
1st spring- I was just clueless, in spite of all my reading. It swarmed.
2nd spring- I filled the back of the hive with frames, trying to keep ahead of the bees. They swarmed.
3rd spring- I learned to insert empty frames around or into the broodnest to relieve congestion and give the bees something to do as they approached the honey flow. They all swarmed.
4th spring- I discovered the importance of... 1. Moving any uneaten fall honey frames from the back of the spring broodnest to the front entrance, thus removing the honey barrier between the broodnest and the rest of the box. 2. Managing the spring population by pulling brood and resource frames and using them to create nucs. Doing this knocks back the population and helps keep the hive from swarming before the honey flow arrives. No swarms yet.
One of my hives had drone comb last week. This week, bees were covering all the the frames, and piling into the open, unused back half of the long box.
what I am trying to learn now is HOW MUCH to take out of the hives. Too little, and they will still get congested and swarm. Too much, and I will prevent them from reaching peak population when the honey flow begins, which means less honey.
TheHoneyPump shared a nifty little formula for setting up bees "on order", that I am working to put into practice.