1) How do professional beekeepers keep their beehives from swarming? Would seem that they couldn't afford to have half the bees in their hives taking off periodically for parts unknown. How do they keep them at home?

2) When bees swarm, is it the new queen or the old one that leaves? This question is prompted by the concern that the nature of the hive might change. We've got africanized bees in our area, and the potential exists for an africanized drone to mate with the queen in my hive. The question is, is it this new queen who has recently mated with some strange male that leaves, or is she the one who takes over the hive?

Thanks.

The swarming impulse is not well understood; why it happens, what triggers it and the many smaller factors that influence it. Most folks just accept the answer that it's due to brood nest over crowding. That appears to be a main causative factor and one, most people can understand and "get their hands around."

Typically, the old queen leaves and the new queen stays behind. However, it's not quite that simple. If your hive 'throws off' multiple swarms (which is not uncommon), then of course, ultimately new queen(s) will depart (including virgin queens). And if your "old queen" has a clipped wing, this is no guarantee of keeping her either. There have been reports of such queens even trying to crawl away from the hive (supposedly due to the swarming impulse - though I've never seen that). More common, is that the old queen is eventually rejected and balled to death (which I have seen), thus making requeening of some fashion necessary. This is one reason that marked queens are very necessary (especially in AHB areas).

You've hit the nail on the head with your comments / concerns about the nature of the hive changing IF the new queen mates with AHB drones. This is the problem. Given the brood rearing cycle time and the natural replacement of the old foragers, you probably won't notice a discernable difference in the overall nature of the colony for about 45 to 60 days. Of course, by then, you're going to either have a good "normal" hive or one that's going to be a real problem.

Over the last three weeks, the bees from one of the hives have swarmed three times and have been put back in the hive from which they swarmed.

This morning the bees behaved as if they were swarming, but didn't 'ball' and went back to the hive. We thought that it may have been a virgin queen on a mating flight. A few hours later they swarmed again and balled in a nearby Budlea bush. My dad collected them in a box and put them in the spare hive. This is where the mystery begins as when he later checked it, the bees had deserted it. We didn't see them swarm again so we assumed that they had gone back to thier original hive. My dad checked that hive but couldn't find a queen. He reported that there was hardly any brood in it and he had found three swarms cells and destroyed them.

What I don't understand is a) why they swarmed with so few brood cells (although there is certainly 30lbs + of honey in the hive) and dad had put on an extra super, and b) where did the queen go?

Could it be that she upped and left anyway after the scouts had found a more suitable home? Did my dad make an error of judgement when he destroyed the swarm cells?

I am confused! If anybody has any knowledge that can help, it would be gratefully received :)

Thanks

These could have been after swarms with virgin queens?

>>My dad checked that hive but couldn't find a queen. He reported that there was hardly any brood in it and he had found three swarms cells and destroyed them.<<

Why would you destroy them if you seen no queen?
I'm still a newbie...5 years, but never killed swarm cells, by doing it you can run into the problem of a hive being queen less.

>>What I don't understand is a) why they swarmed with so few brood cells <<

This makes sense, the queen stopped laying,.. getting ready to swarm.

Konrad

I did think myself that killing the cells was a mistake and too hasty. I wish I'd said something now!

Thank you for the link too. I'll have a look at it now.