Planning ahead for swarm control?

[GSF]

I've read a lot about different measures for swarm control. I realize nothing is a guarantee. I have 17 hives and one nuc. At least 3 are 8f double deeps. The rest are single 8f deeps, some with a medium some without. I had to split this year on 2 March. Swarm cells, no Q, and a box wall to wall with bees.

Here's my goal. I have 2 or 3 hives that have really cranked it up. I'd like to pull some queens, maybe put them in a nuc and put a frame of eggs in there. Eventually I'd like to have all my queens being descendants from these hives. Right now the issue at hand for me is keeping them out of the trees. I'd like to hear from your experiences.

[Hemlock]

Well,

There are lots of things you can do as you have already read.  I suggest you try most of them.  With 17 colonies you have enough bees to do a lot. 

My favorite, though, are Queen Castles; especially since you want to go there.  This Winter you can make maybe 10 of them or so; figuring 3 slots per castle.  They let you archive your best genetics and make lots of little splits to reduce Swarm pressure. 

[Michael Bush]

Here's my experience:
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesswarmcontrol.htm

[iddee]

I would also suggest a longer ladder and maybe get access to a bucket truck. No method is foolproof.     :-D

[rdy-b]

**Eventually I'd like to have all my queens being descendants from these hives. Right now the issue at hand for me is keeping them out of the trees. I'd like to hear from your experiences.**

mother Queens from production hives are the back bone of any viable operation-with that being said the key is to
introduce new drone material- not the same mother father inbreeding again and again-is there a plane for your drone
population-to increase hybrid vitality---this will cary you into more sustainable bees---
keeping bees out of the trees depends on your management style-are you going for increase of bees to supplement
your operation -or are you chasing honey--the easy answer is for bees for increase and splits-its a no brainer-the
hard one is for honey management-that depends a lot on the environmental; conditions that are dealt that year-but as a general
rule if bees are heavy from natural flows and blooms-before the apple bloom then a supper of drawn comb above will hold them
to task-if not then they are light in weight in the brood nest and will back fill it first-then the impulse to swarm is intensified
--there is more to it than that --but those are simple indicators-RDY-B

[Culley]

I use a variation of what I have learned from Michael Bush's website. I place empty frames into the brood chamber, and I move some brood up into the next box so the queen lays in multiple boxes. Because I am usually building hives up in size  without combs I kept over winter, I keep the bees drawing comb. The thing with opening the brood nest is to just do it enough, not too much. When a colony is building up quickly, yet the weather is variable, I find this can be hard to estimate. I also try to make sure there is space to put nectar, because all of a sudden the bees can bring in bucketloads of nectar.

I also do splits. I have had good success with 'shook swarms', where you separate the combs and brood from the queen and flying bees, and I will experiment with this more. Recently I have been learning to make nucs.

I had an absolutely booming hive which wintered with 2 deeps of brood and a deep of honey, which swarmed early this spring. It was still cold enough that I would not have thought to open the hives. Lesson learned.

[10framer]

gary, this year i had better luck expanding brood nests than i did by pulling queens to make splits.  the hives that got more room in the brood chambers in march out produced the hives that i did splits from mainly because those hives went ahead and swarmed anyway once the queens hatched.  i got a lot of comb drawn and increased my numbers but i basically turned one strong hive into 2 or 3 weak ones.  part of my problem was not having a location to take my splits to.  i'm sure that if i had carried them away as soon as i made them they would have been stronger sooner and the parent colonies would have been less crowded.