How to Stop Bees Swarming

Swarm prevention that actually works.

Every beekeeper loses a swarm at some point. It’s practically a rite of passage. But most of the time, it’s preventable. And the technique we’re covering here doesn’t just stop your bees from swarming. Done right, it significantly boosts your honey production too.

Why bees swarm

Before you can stop something, it helps to understand why it happens.

Bees swarm for two main reasons. The first is reproduction. It’s how colonies multiply naturally. The old queen leaves with around half the workers to find a new home, and a new queen is raised in the original hive. The second reason is more practical: colonies swarm when they run out of space.

When a strong colony is packed in tight, with nowhere for the queen to lay and nowhere to store nectar, the bees start making preparations. They begin raising queen cells. Once those cells are nearly capped (or just capped), the old queen leaves. If you’re not watching closely, you’ll come back to find half your bees have gone.

The good news is that space is something you can control. And that’s exactly what the preemptive Demaree is designed to do.

What is the preemptive Demaree?

The Demaree is a well-established swarm control method. The preemptive version takes it a step further. Instead of waiting for swarm cells to appear, you act early when you spot a big, strong colony building up fast.

You’re essentially doing a vertical split. The queen goes into a new brood box at the bottom with a frame of brood and plenty of space to lay. The original brood boxes go to the top, far enough from the queen that the bees up there think they’re queenless. They’ll start drawing emergency queen cells, which you come back and knock down a week later.

Two big advantages set this apart from other methods. First, you don’t need an extra floor or roof, so it works even if you’ve only got one hive setup. Second, while the top brood box is stacked full of emerging bees, the bottom brood box is in a race to catch up. The result is the production of LOTS of bees, which naturally boosts honey production.

It sounds complicated when you write it all out, but in practice it’s surprisingly straightforward. Here’s exactly how to do it.

How to do a preemptive Demaree: step by step

Before you start

This technique is for big, strong colonies. There’s no point doing it on a small or struggling hive. You’re looking for a colony that’s bursting at the seams, with bees covering every frame and real energy building up.

Two non-negotiable rules before you begin: 1 – go through every frame and confirm there are no existing swarm cells. Don’t assume. Check every single frame. If swarm cells are already present, deal with those first before attempting this manipulation on a different colony. 2 – your hive needs to have an active brood nest and bees filling at least 2 supers with bees. You need this number of bees to connect the two brood nests within the Demaree. Without it it can fail and really set the bees back.

Step one: move the brood box

Pick up the entire brood box and move it to one side, leaving just the floor in place. All the flying bees will now land on the floor, confused, looking for their hive.

Step two: set up the new bottom box

Take a fresh brood box, ideally filled with foundation or drawn comb. Put it straight onto the floor in place of the original. Pull out the middle frame and leave a gap.

Step three: find the queen

Go through the original brood box and find your queen. You want her on a frame of capped brood with no queen cells. If she’s on the wrong frame, gently move her onto it. Take that frame and place it into the gap in your new bottom box.

That’s where the queen lives now. She’ll immediately start laying into the surrounding comb, and all the flying bees will return to the entrance and cluster around her.

Step four: build the stack

Now build the tower. In this order, from bottom to top:

1. Your new brood box with the queen on one frame
2. A queen excluder
3. Your existing super (or a new one)
4. Another super for distance
5. Your original brood box
6. Crown board and roof

Yes, it’s tall. Yes, it looks like absolute chaos. But this is the whole point. The queen is isolated at the bottom with plenty of space to lay. The brood and bees in the top boxes are so far from her pheromone that they immediately start drawing emergency queen cells, thinking they’re queenless.

The two supers in the middle? The bees are going to pack those with honey.

Step five: come back at seven days

This is the critical step, and the one where most people go wrong.

At seven days, you need to go through every single frame in the top brood boxes. Shake all the bees off each frame. Kill every queen cell you find. Every. Single. One. Miss just one and the colony may swarm.

We know that sounds dramatic, but it’s true. You’re walking a fine line with this manipulation. The whole point is to prevent swarming, but if you don’t complete this step properly, you’ll almost certainly lose a swarm anyway.

Be thorough. Be methodical. Don’t rush.

If they dont create cells, don’t worry. Sometimes they don’t and this is good – it shows they are settled.

Looking for a calm queen

All our queens, regardless of line, are rated 10 out of 10 for beginner beekeepers. Calmness and temperament are our top priority across every variety.

Browse our queen bees

What to expect at each stage

At seven days

Here’s what you should find in each section of the hive:

Bottom brood box: Bees 1-2 frames. The queen will be laying on one to two frames with eggs and larvae at all stages. No swarm cells. She’s got all the space she needs and no reason to swarm.

The middle supers: Already filling with nectar. The bees come in through the entrance, recognise that the bottom box is the brood area, and head upwards to store honey. These boxes get heavy fast.

Top brood boxes: Capped brood, emerging bees, and lots of emergency queen cells. This is expected. Your job at this visit is to go through every frame and knock down every one of those cells.

At nine to ten days

By this point, the manipulation really starts to show its value. The top boxes continue filling with honey as the brood emerges. The bottom box has a strong, expanding brood nest. The middle supers are some of the heaviest boxes in the hive.

Once you’ve knocked down the queen cells, you’re back on weekly inspections in the bottom box as normal. The manipulation resets the clock, but it doesn’t remove swarm pressure forever. Check regularly and give extra supers if needed.

Six weeks later

Here’s why this technique is worth the effort.

All that brood in the top boxes has now emerged. The young bees that developed up there move down to the brood nest or out to forage. The top boxes, now empty of brood, are full of honey. The bottom box has a thriving brood nest and a queen that’s been laying continuously because she’s had space from the very start.

You get a strong colony AND full supers. That’s the whole point of the preemptive Demaree. It doesn’t just prevent swarming. It times a huge emergence of bees to coincide with your main nectar flow whilst giving the queen a huge amount of space to lay, which naturally suppresses swarming.

Tips for getting the best results

Time it carefully. You want the mass emergence of bees from the top boxes to line up with your best nectar flow. Work backwards from your expected flow date. You need roughly five to six weeks between the manipulation and the flow starting.

Don’t stop inspecting. Once you’ve knocked down the queen cells at seven days, resume weekly inspections in the bottom brood box. If that box fills out completely, the bees will try to swarm again.

You can repeat it. If the bottom box fills and you want to keep going, do the whole thing again. Some beekeepers run this two or three times on their strongest colonies in a single season.

Double brood is fine. The technique works on double brood setups as described above. The stack gets very tall, so make sure everything is stable before you walk away from it.

Start with bees you can actually work with

The preemptive Demaree is a hands-on manipulation. You’re shaking frames, moving boxes, and spending proper time inside the hive. All of that is much easier when your bees are calm.

All the colonies we sell are personally selected by Laurence for gentle temperament. You get bees you can work confidently, even during something as involved as a full Demaree stack.