two queen system

[abeille]

Hi

A friend of mine who happens to be a beekeeper asked me a question, and I didn't know what to answer him.

He has 3 hives that he works in a two queen system, and 2 others that are standard. All of these 5 hives are pretty strong. They all had some foundation to build (about the same for all), and have been fed earlier this season.

Here, as in other places too -for what I can read -, it has been raining 23 days out of 31 in July, our honeyflow month. So I believe the honey yield (?) won't be great.

My friend inspected his hives today to find the two standard one with one super each filled with 3/4 capped honey frames, wich is good. But the 3 2-queens hives haven't filled a super at all. The only honey he can see is the one normally present around the brood in the brood nest.

How come those 3 hives who appears to be as strong as the others can't produce honey? Can it be because of his two queen system? He used a Snelgrove board for the first few weeks, than took it off. The two queens are still there -he saw them- but the only entrance is the bottom one. Can it be because of that ? All the bees have to go down in the bottom brood nest to get out and get in...

Your thoughts ?

Hugo

[Clayton]

Might it be possible that due to the confining and the greater population in the 2 queen colony that it required must food to maintain the larger population. This is just a guess however there could be lots of reasons.

[Michael Bush]

I agree with Clayton. If you have more workers and less opportunities to gather food, it's just more mouths to feed. It's like having a big Union workforce that is on strike.