Well consider me irresponsible with my bees
Admittedly, I live near a town of 2000 residents... That's the "town". I live a bit outside of town.
Most of our calls are from locals who know our apiary, and know we grow through swarms. The cutouts have been not due to fear, but not wanting to deal with the problems associated with a dead out when that occurs. None have been out of fear of bees per say.
And I think it's fair to say MOST arguments I've heard for artificial swarm control, is based on honey production... Not being a good neighbor. The question today came to me from a guy asking if I was worried that swarming would reduce honey production... Well of course it will.
I just don't really care to manipulate bees, outside of keeping them in apiaries. We are expanding to a couple more properties to keep growing our numbers, but miles apart. We also strive to capture our own swarms if possible, because they are all stock from multiple year over wintered local stock who have survived in spite of never being treated or fed. Those are the bees I want to "keep".
This year we actually caught a wild swarm on our property. Which was awesome, considering that 5 years ago, you'd never see a honey bee on this property. Likely descendants of one of our previous swarms that was cast into the woodland near us.
We all do it differently for different reasons I suppose. And I know full well, we are the outliers, by a wide margin.
