> I averaged DOUBLE the honey crop as my neighboring beekeepers.
Precisely my point. For three or four times the work.
>We've found timing and methodology is critical.
Absolutely. Timing is everything. Bad timing on when you make it a two queen hive can actually peak the brood rearing during the flow and peak the population AFTER the flow and actually cut your honey crop in half instead of doubling it.
If I wanted to maximize a honey crop with no concern for how much work (other than compared to other labor intensive methods for a maximin crop) I think I'd do this:
Put two hives right against each other side by side in the early spring. Maybe even put them in five frame boxes if there's only ten or fifteen frames of bees. We'll number boxes from bottom to top, 1,2,3,4. Sort all the frames and put the honey on the bottom (1) where you don't have to move it so much, the queen in the next box (2) with a little open brood and some empty drawn comb, the rest of the open brood in the next box (3) and the capped brood in the top box (4). If you only have two boxes worth of bees then you may have to just put the capped in the top and the open brood and empty comb underneath with the queen and do this every ten days. If you have three boxes of bees,then rotate the boxes up, while leaving the queen in box 2. That way the empty comb that the brood emerged from moves from 4 to 2. The open brood and eggs the queen just layed moves from 2 to 3. The capped brood moves from 3 to 4. If you do this once a week, that's one brood cycle and the brood is nicely graded into empty comb, open brood and capped brood. Now, about two weeks before the flow, you pull all the open brood and empty comb and honey(which is nicely sorted for you already in boxes 1,3 and 4 just at time to rotate again), off of both hives and one of the queens for a split to another location 10 yards or more away. Consolidate all the capped brood at the old location in one hive with lots of empty supers. You now have, for the flow, the consolidated field force from two hives, plus all the emerging brood that will have nothing to do except forage. I call this a DOUBLE cut down split/combine. I bet you'll get even more than a two queen hive makes. But who wants to work this hard?
The other variation is to do this on a three box long hive with a brood nest at each end and a vertical queen excluder to keep the queens at each end. Stack up all the boxes you need for the brood on the ends and the supers in the middle. Roate the boxes, as per above on both ends. (remember the honey is on the bottom so it doesn't have to rotate) Again, just before the flow (May 30th here) pull out the open brood, the empty cells and the honey and one queen and make a cut down split off of the two queen hive.