Swarm season can be a nightmare or an opportunity depending upon your preparations! It is a nightmare if you have a 1000 hives and you have made no preparations. It is an opportunity if you want to increase your hive count to replace hives that have died out or you want to expand the number of hives that you have.

The essential task of all of our beekeeping that is directed to honey production is to bring colony strength to its maximum at the time the main honey flow in our area occurs. This will produce the maximum honey production and is a goal to work toward. If the hive population peaks two or three weeks before the main honey flow you can almost guarantee the hive will produce nothing but swarms. If the main honey flow occurs when the hive barely fills one deep box of bees you can almost guarantee the hive will not produce surplus honey. Both situations often lead to poor wintering.

An important principle with our honey bees is that the colony will build up to a maximum strength and will then start to decrease in strength. This is approximately 60,000 bees in a single queen colony. 

For some reason our European bees want to reach this maximum strength. By timing the growth of our colonies to achieve this maximum strength just at the onset of the honey flow we minimize the swarming and maximize our surplus honey production.

The bees naturally expand explosively in spring and want to swarm to populate the area with more hives. Hives that do not build up explosively in the spring usually have disease or are headed with poor queens that need to be replaced. These issues must be addressed immediately if there is to be a honey crop.

Hive development progresses with the bees filling the top box with brood, honey and pollen leaving the bottom box filled with bees some pollen and honey and little brood. The queen will not lay any significant brood in the bottom box until the top box is plumb full of brood, bees, pollen and honey and the bottom box is filled with bees. The queen will start laying eggs in the top portion of the frames in the bottom box gradually filling the frames with brood once the bees fill both boxes.

Switching the top and bottom boxes before the top box is filled will often encourage the queen to begin laying in the second box before both are plumb full of bees. This places the bottom box frames above the queen's brood in a position that is more attractive for her to lay eggs. The warmth and humidity of the lower box naturally rises warming the frames above.

This manipulation will stimulate hive expansion and delay the initial urges for swarming. It will also provide you with many frames of brood to make new hives. It will not stop swarming but will encourage rapid expansion of the colony which is essential for honey production.

Vigorous, healthy new queens are always the beekeepers best bet for good honey production.  Colonies headed with new queens may not swarm even if the colony population gets to swarm strength before the main honey flow occurs. This is not to say that first year queens will not swarm. If your first year queen is a good one and her colony gets to swarm strength much before the major honey flow it will likely swarm. The key again is getting your hive to maximum strength at the time of the major honey flow.

Swarming is often blamed on old queens. Older queens seem to be more prone to swarming but when properly managed their swarming can generally be controlled. What is important is that the queen is an excellent brood producer and that the hive is managed to bring it to maximum population when the major honey flow starts.

Controlling swarming is really keeping the hive population below the peak until the major honey flow starts. When the honey starts pouring in, the hive forgets its desire to start swarm cells unless the queen is failing. In fact in a good honey flow the queen is often totally shut down from laying as the nectar is placed in the comb she is laying in. She will not lay in comb that is partially filled with nectar. Just try and find a queen during a good honey flow. You are looking for eggs to find where the queen might be and you cannot find any as the brood chamber has been flooded with fresh nectar.

The strength of the hive can be readily controlled by removing bees and brood. The bees and brood can be used to make a new hive or can be placed in a weaker hive to improve its strength. A normal healthy overwintered hive will have two boxes of bees and brood sometime during the dandelion bloom. This hive will surely be at swarm strength before the major honey flow starts in early to mid-June. You can remove half the brood and half the bees early in May and this hive will bounce back to full strength in time for the honey flow.

The bees and brood you remove can be combined to strengthen a weak hive or used to start a new hive by giving it a mated queen on a new hive stand. Just place the brood and bees into the new hive. The bees will readily accept the new brood and bees without fighting. Do not let the new hive raise its own queen. The new queen takes approximately 30 days to develop, mate and begin laying. The hive may or may not be successful in rearing a queen.

If you do not wish to start new colonies and you do not need brood to strengthen weak colonies then use the brood to start some nucleus hives with purchased mated queens or queen cells that you raise. This provides you with the best method for re-queening your hives after the honey flow using your nucleus hives for the new queen--the only guaranteed method for introducing a new queen.

In summary the goal for honey producers is to control the strength of the colony to be at a maximum level when the major honey flow starts. This requires a healthy colony headed by a vigorous laying queen. In normal circumstances this queen will expand the colony size to be at a maximum level before the major honey flow starts. It is more than likely that the colony will swarm unless some action is taken to control colony strength. Removing brood and bees to control the hive population to meet this goal will also provide increase for your stock, will minimize swarming and will provide you with the best chance for having a good honey crop.