History of Swarm Prevention

When bees experience overcrowding within the hive they will respond by swarming. This is the natural way that honeybee colonies reproduce. Approximately half the bees in the hive will leave the hive along with the existing queen bee. This relieves the overcrowding and is the way that bees propagate new hives. When apiary hives swarm it results in a reduction in the amount of honey that can be harvested. The bees put their energy into making a new hive instead of producing honey. Recapturing the swarm is additional work for the beekeeper and may result in the swarm invading a populated area causing people to panic. There is a delicate balance that must be achieved by beekeepers that hope to harvest surplus honey from their bees. Strong hives are necessary to bring in enough nectar to make extra honey that can be harvested, but strong hives are more likely to swarm due to overcrowding of the brood box.

Lewis Aspinwall - 1908 Swarm Prevention Frame, Patent Number 891,584

In 1897 Lewis Agustus Aspinwall patented a method of making bees feel like they had adequate room so they would focus their attention on honey production instead of swarming. Aspinwall's principle encouraged the bees to expand their hive upward into the empty honey supers that were place on top of the hive. 

In my present hive I employ similar brood or comb frames, and I prefer to arrange the same alternately with dummy frames that are filled in with a series of similar or parallel strips or slats. These slats may be placed in any desired direction and so close to one another as to leave between them about a bee-space, and the slats are preferably as wide as the dummy frames, and they are so close as to prevent the bees building comb in the frames, but yet at the same time allowing room for the bees to travel through the dummy frames from one comb frame to the next and in this way providing ample room for all the bees and for the increase of the bees, so as to overcome the tendency of the bees to swarm at certain periods.

Placing three CombForms™ side-by-side at the edge of the brood ball creates the appropriate spacing and is hypothesized as another way to utilize the Aspinwall method for swarm prevention. Preliminary testing appears favorable; however, controlled trials supported by this crowd funding project are needed.