I made that observation too. A fair few first time beeks around here have one flow hive and don’t know about swarming, let alone are looking at getting prepared with a second broodbox at least. I have a baited box ready for when these swarms are happening, although I think here in the National Park the swarms will find plenty of suitable real estate.
Not sure what percentage of colonies can survive around here long term without getting inspected ever and the only attention they get is for harvesting the flow frames. Guess if the colony is strong enough they won’t get slimed out either. Time will tell.
This is fascinating @JeffH. We had 2 nuclei delivered yesterday by a club member who has 50 years of beekeeping experience. He said that in San Diego, our bees generally start swarm preparations about 30 days after the first drone cells are seen in the hive. He saw them in late December, so about now is prime time for prevention.
I searched our strong hive today (3rd or 4th time this year) - no queen cells or cups, but quite a few drones. As they had about 10 frames of brood (not full, about 60-70%), I stole a couple of frames for the new nucleus. The new bees are a little bit “hot” at the moment, so hopefully the brood from our calm hive will help cool everything down quickly. 
Kona queen this time according to the supplier - we spotted her with a nice yellow dot on her thorax. Very Cordovan in colouring - pretty lady. 
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Hi & well done Dawn:) I’m a bit slow typing on a laptop, however getting a bit quicker. The other telltale sign of a colony getting ready to swarm is when they start raising drones between the top bars & qx.
I wanted to make another video the other day but our video recorder died & I’m not going to pay to get it fixed, I’ll buy a new one.
The video was going to be about bees gathering propolis in autumn. I walked near my truck the other day & heard a racket of what sounded like bees cleaning up honey from a sticky. I had no stickies on the back of my truck. I had some boxes with lots of propolis on the rebates. The bees were just flat out gathering that propolis, with urgency.
Even though we are still enduring hot summery weather & the bees are still gathering water from my water chestnut tub, they recognise that the days are getting shorter & thus preparing for winter.
It’s incredible, if the days were getting longer, they’d leave the propolis alone.
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