Natural Beekeeping International Forum

[Ukrainian beekeeper]

Hello. We are from Ukraine. We want to share our experience on stopping swarming. Sorry for bad english. We are interested in what you think about this method.
Here is my first video in English on our channel. If you want, you can see it Or read the description below. I wonder what you think about this method and whether I need to further translate our videos into English.
https://youtu.be/qe56T181pho

Method of prevent swarming, Castling.
You make an inspection of bees. For any reasons you do it later than you need. During the inspection found, that bees-colony is in before swarming situation and can fly out at any moment. You can see it on such grounds:
1) swarming queen cells;
2) queen do not lay eggs;
3) brood is sealed everywhere.
That means that bees haven`t job. If you see it all, your bees will fly out at any moment. Apply here method ?Castling?.
Let`s denote hive of swarming bees like A. At this hive find a queen and isolate her for the time of next manipulations. Next we reduce a bees colony by making splits. Number of splits depends on the strength of the bees colony in hive A. For example, there are 20 frames in the hive A. It is 100 %/ We make 2 splits. Put 25% (5 frames in our example) with queen cells and sealed brood in the hive with split. And make the same with next 5 frames. Also, put frames with open brood in the splits from any other hive. Now you have 2 splits and there are 50 % (10 frames) in the hive A.
Next take a hive with normal bees colony, which do not swarming. Lets denote it B. At the hive B take find a queen and isolate her for the time of next manipulations.
From hive A take bigger part of frames (in our example 6 frames) with bees and put them in hive B. From hive B take the same number of frames with open brood and bees and put it in hive A. The number of frames with bees which are swarming in hive A must be less than number of frames with normal bees which we puted in this hive from hive B, because bees are subordinate to most. In result, we have 4 frames with swarming bees and 6 frames with normal bees. There are more normal bees then swarming bees in hive A. That why bees colony must to stop swarming. When queen begin lay eggs we know exactly that the bees colony no more swarming.
If you want to avoid fights between bees during all manipulations you need sprinkle bees solution with the smell of wormwood, mint or sprinkle them with flour. Bees in booth hive must have the same smell.