86. Swarming should be controlled in order to prevent a division of the working force of the colony at a time when its unity is most needed. One cannot hope to successfully produce honey in profitable quantities unless he seriously attempts the control of swarming. This is opposite to the view commonly held by many uninformed beekeepers, who insist that their colonies have not done well unless each has cast one or more swarms. It is to be hoped the information contained in this chapter will show adequate reasons for proceeding to control swarming.

87. Imagine yourself as a contractor hiring a big force of bees to harvest a crop of honey from a nearby clover field, housing these bees at your expense in a hive large enough to hold and store their surplus. What would you think if at the time when the most clover blossoms were out in the nearby field and most of the workers struck and went away, leaving the cooks and bottle washers to do the work? It is easy to imagine the effect this would have upon the prospects for your honey crop from that colony that year.

88. Exactly the same situation exists in the beehive at the beginning of the honey flow unless swarming is curbed. The old belief that swarming was necessary to carry out the natural instincts of the bee has been disproved, and so thoroughly that it does not deserve mention. It is absolutely necessary, if you wish to secure the maximum number of pounds of honey from each colony, to keep that colony from dividing its strength by swarming, just as it starts to work. One must keep the instinct of storing surplus honey dominant and keep the natural instinct of the bee to swarm, subservient. Bees are animals of instinct and only do one thing at a time well. If you create conditions within their hive leading to the domination of the storing instinct, they will bend every energy toward storing the maximum crop of honey and seldom toward swarming and division of their strength.

89. You are also urged to reduce swarming in order to save your own time, as it is no longer profitable for a beekeeper to spend hours watching his apiary for issuing swarms or to prevent swarms from absconding. It is far simpler and less expensive to create conditions so ideal for the bees that they will continue to store honey and not attempt to abscond. No one has yet found a proven theory for the cause of swarming. However, under all normal conditions bees will usually swarm at a time when the brood nest is crowded with young bees.

90. Therefore any successful measures designed to get the excess of bees out of the brood nest and into the supers will help to control swarming, if it does not otherwise interfere with the normal conditions of the colony.

91. Bees will move up into the supers where they store surplus honey only when they are short of room for storing this honey in their brood chamber. A young vigorous queen laying the maximum number of eggs per day at the height of the season requires much of the room in the brood combs. The bees are then forced into the supers to store their surplus honey. The presence of a failing queen in a hive will cause the bees to build queen cells to supersede her. When this occurs in the swarming season the bees frequently swarm either with the old queen when the first queen cells are capped or they may swarm as each young queen emerges from her cell. Therefore one of the prime causes of excessive swarming may be an old queen. Successful beekeepers have therefore laid down the rule that one should requeen each colony not less than every two years. Inasmuch as this is difficult to do in spring, you will again see the value of correct fall management, an important part of which is requeening.

92. Another condition that contributes to swarming is lack of comb room in which the queen may lay eggs. This necessary room may be given well in advance. See paragraphs 2 and 82. It must be available so the queen can reach it with a minimum of delay. This comb room must contain an abundance of perfect worker cells. Comb cells that are stretched out of shape cause barriers which the queen will not cross until forced to. The wood of frames is a barrier which the queen does not readily cross. Spaces below combs not built all the way down to the bottom bar of the frame are barriers. All drone comb in the brood nest is perhaps the greatest barrier of all. It is highly advisable to have good combs in sufficient quantity available to the queen side by side so that she may reach them readily and keep her brood nest in the form of a sphere. You will see that combs of honey or sheets of foundation inserted in the center of the brood nest will be barriers. The most practical method of giving the queen plenty of room is by adding additional hive bodies of drawn worker combs in advance of their immediate need or using the large brood chambers.

93. Another cause of swarming is insufficient room in which the workers may store nectar. Although nectar is often temporarily stored in the brood nest by the worker bees, its permanent position in the hive is designed to be outside of the brood nest at the time of the year when the most nectar is available. If sufficient super room is not added in advance of needs, the bees are forced to store an excess of nectar in the brood chamber and this shuts down the available egg room for the queen. Not only must enough room be given for the amount of nectar stored, but one must keep in mind that nectar contains about 40 per cent more water when first stored than honey. See paragraph 14. Therefore bees require room to spread out nectar beyond the room that will be required for that nectar when it has taken on the consistency of honey.