Swarms are great for drawing comb, then I kill the queens and replace or unite with my own bees. I really do disagree with our association and members giving swarms to new keepers and those that find numerous swarm cells making up nucs to give away. All this does is increase the number of swarmy bees. I only make nucs up from colonies I have to force to make queen cells. But this year looking back at last years records I have been as much as 6 weeks later doing first inspections. My use of pollen subs has allowed the bees to grow very well despite the freezing wet spring but judging space has been very difficult, until the last 2 weeks I hadn't done an inspection above 12c and I personally do very much believe that space is a very important factor in swarm prevention. Last year I only had 2 colonies swarm, this year its tripled but no forage all spring then 2 weeks of flow they have filled every cell available with pollen or nectar and queens have been shut down for space and to make things worse I have restricted supers to make them cap the honey as every farmer is growing OSR this year and every colony is rammed with bees. LOL...Never 2 years the same. 11 years in and I still don't know what I am doing...
Similar this year for me I went double brood and honey super very early.I can barely lift most of the Brood boxes now and there's very few dry cells.
I've taken out some clogged frames and put in foundation (ended up having to buy more last week) with the hope that they might burn off some stores drawing it but the new frames are being filled in the process.
This afternoon I will be doing some foundationless super frames as they've filled all my drawn comb,and drawn the pack of foundation I bought as an emergency.
Hate to say it but here's hoping for June Gap....
The only ones that haven't tried to swarm are the '22 buckfasts.