First Swarm of the Year

[Beeboy01]

Just had a different afternoon in the beeyard. I flipped the two bottom supers on hive #2 about five weeks ago to slow it down a little. It is one of those godzilla sized hives, one of my best honey producers last year and it went into the winter really strong with the plan being to keep it strong for a good honey crop this year. I have been keeping an eye on it over the last two weeks because of some light bearding and have pulled two or three frames of brood out each week for nucs and swarm control.
   Well #2 fooled me big time, I was out working that hive today and noticed that as soon as I opened it the bees began to run all around when smoked instead of going down between the frames which is a sure sign of pre swarming behavior. I got down into the brood box and pulled three frames of old wonky brood to start another nuc, put the hive back together and looked around to see a swarm settling on a grapefruit tree right next to the bee yard. I'm almost positive that the swarm came from #2 because within an 1/2 hour the swarm flew back over to #2 and settled on it's front. By then I had the nuc with the wonky brood frames set up in the grapefruit tree and within another 1/2 hour the swarm came back and with a little help from me slowly settled in the nuc. What was interesting is that I haven't seen any queen cells or swarm cells in #2 during my weekly inspections, believe me I've been looking for them for swarm control and to start nucs with. I already have two full shallows on hive #2 along with two empty drawn shallows so the hive has a lot of room going into the flow.

  What else can I do to keep the hive from swarming or am I just out of luck, I really don't want to do a split, no more room or equipment, or break the hive down to nucs. Would going into the brood box and scrambling the frames by checker boarding them with foundation slow the swarming down. I would take the extra brood and put them in one of the other weaker hives or start another nuc.

I like this strain of bees, they are Italian mutts that have always produced a yellow/orange bee since I started the hive five years ago plus they are good producers. The rest of the hives in my yard have slowly gone darker since I set them up and I would like to keep this hive together if possible.

Thanks
Ed