Best swarm prevention

[Bob Wilson]

Pardon me for not scouring older threads for this info.
However, I have a friend keeping standard langstroths, and he is having a hard time keeping up larger populations.
Several of his hives are swarming even during peak honey flow, and after making splits over two weeks ago. They swarm even with an empty super on top of the brood box.
Keep it simple, if you can.
Do you pyramid frames to get bees up into an empty box, while also making space in the bottom brood box?
Do you put your empty boxes under VS over the brood box?
Do you inspect every frame, in every box, and every week to cull out the queen cells?
Do you stack multiple empty supers, giving colonies a LOT of room?

[Ben Framed]

Bob what is his splitting method or technique of splitting?

[JurassicApiary]

Agreed, more info is needed.  As to arrangement, checker boarding works well for making the bees feel less pressured instantly.  That said, some genetic lines are simply highly apt to swarming, regardless of the beekeeper's efforts.  If you've got a hive here or there in residential areas that are hot swarmers, consider relocating them to larger properties so any swarms cast pose less risk to neighbors--they're gonna do their thing whether you like it or not sometimes.

[Bob Wilson]

They are wild stock, originally caught in swarm traps. Small, little bees.
One hive was split by pulling a nuc out of it and leaving the queen with a knocked back population. The other was a pulled nuc, taking the queen also, but two weeks later the queen less hive swarmed. Perhaps virgin swarming.
Just how much empty space do you add at the beginning of the nectar flow?

[NigelP]

If they are genetically inclined to swarm, all the space in the world won't stop them. The local bees in my area are frequent swarmers, so I don't keep them.

[Ben Framed]

Jurassic and NigelP both made good points in my opinion. Mr Bush goes into detail about checker-boarding in his writings., https://bushfarms.com/beesexperiment.htm
When bees are determined to swarm as Nigel described; In my experience pulling the queen with the split usually does the job as bees do two major things, make honey and multiply. By taking the queen when making the split (when they are in a swarming mood, (larva in queen cups or capped queen cells are good indicators) is meant to satisfy the colony which is in a swarm mood situation, settling them down and onward with business as usual.  Perhaps Mr Bush and others will have more to add. 

[BeeMaster2]

Bob,
Sounds like what I call Super Swarming.  The bees are holding queens in their cells to bee able to make numerous swarms. If you put your ear next to the hive, if the bees are holding queens in their cells you will hear the queens piping. When you go into the hive to make a Nuc, check to see if there are any swarm cells. Remove all but two or three. Check every frame. If you use a lot of smoke while inspecting, you can sometimes disturb them enough to distract the bees and the queens will escape. Judy and I had to do this with our observation hive 2 weeks ago. Just putting a lot of smoke in the hive while it was closed up did not work. Last March I did an oxalic  treatment to a hive that had Super Swarmed and still had queens piping. The next day they were not piping. The Oxalic disturbed them enough for all the queens to get out.
Jim Altmiller

[Ben Framed]

Good information Jim. Iddee also recommends leaving two cells if I remember correctly..  I have found multiple queens in a swarm. I started a topic called dissecting a swarm Sometime back which described what I found.

https://beemaster.com/forum/index.php?topic=54466.msg495006#msg495006

[Bob Wilson]

Thanks for all the comments.