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Two queen hive

12K views 57 replies 14 participants last post by  Patrick Scannell 
#1 ·
hi everyone:
I was wondering if anyone heard of two queen hives. I know I was surprised to hear of such an arrangement.
I'm hoping if anyone has tried it or have any info on how this thing works would share that info with us.
 
#27 ·
Well, I told a half truth. The first of three pulls was the heaviest I have ever seen. And like your area, the weather stripped the last two pulls completely as a write off. Thanks to my fist heavey pull, I averaged 150lbs/hive. Disapointing, becasuse even if the next two pulls were below average, I would of been selling over 200lbs/hive.

Next years potential,...
 
#28 ·
Next year, that'll surely be the banner year! Right?

Ian the 1st. year we ran 2 queens they were on cinderblocks. We had some pretty rough harvest days trying to keep hives from tipping once we jared them and getting the supers off. Frankly pallets aren't much better.

We too had a huge spring flow we took off the end of June (a month earlier than normal) 6 weeks of drought and a medium fall flow. We had a monster flow in SC this year,the 1st. year we didn't super due to years of poor flows from the extended drought. Our nucs were absolutely honey bound. We also had some of those 5 gallon swarms you just wave at and cry the beginning of April, compliments of the crowded brood nests in the parent hives before splits.

[ December 06, 2005, 09:40 PM: Message edited by: Joel ]
 
#29 ·
Joel,

Do you ever get any good tulip poplar honey? I use to get 100# crop 8 out of 10 yrs but it doesnt seen to yield here lately(last 10 yrs. This year it was about 75% locust and 25% poplar making a ligth mild really good honey with a hint of poplar taste. I have some customers who request it. Would be interested purchasing a couple barrels or more if I dont get any! Rick
 
#30 ·
I'm ashamed to say I don't know for sure, mySC time is usually for a week or so and I'm running against the clock the whole time. With the drought the last several years (except this one) we have not had any great spring crops (excpet this year). We are on the edge of a huge swamp. I see a ton of yellow jasmine, loads of wisteria and some tuplip popular. Lots of rasberry blossom too. The honey we get is very light amber, on the border of white. It has a slightly tinny aftertaste but very sweet going in. I'm pretty sure we had a good jasmine crop this year as you could smell it and it was very heady. Great honey. I've been in the swamp looking a couple of times but man the snakes are big in the south! I know every flow and honey in upstate NY., Need to take a season and see what they're working in SC.
 
#31 ·
Good topic!

I tried to get some comments on that from the BEE-L people few weeks ago, but had no success. My doubt is about swarming in DQ hives. I've read recently in Free's "Pheromones of Social Bees" that DQ colonies are less likely to swarm according to some, probably because of the better distribution of queen substance among the bees. That caught my attention, because swarmings are of major concern to those of us who keep AHBs.

So Suttonbeeman, have you realy noticed less swarmings in your DQs? What do you credit that to? Do you use some additional swarming preventing technique? If you (and others) could elaborate this a bit more, I'd be grateful.

Thanks,

João
 
#32 ·
My experaince and reading says it won't be an effective method of Swarm Contro for AHB do their swarm threshold.

Our operation has demonstrated that if you make the splits at the appropriate time, before swarming starts or at least before swarm cells are capped, you interept that early process and the bees have a sense of swarming due to the loss of a large population of bees. Due to the loss of sealed brood the bees also sense a "depopulation" for a short period. Add to that the large space allowed by 4 or 5 supers and you've removed the incentive.

I would be interested to hear about your attempts with AHB as well as your AHB experiances since we are in the early stages of the issue in much of the country now.
 
#33 ·
Hi Joel,

I've already written a little about AHBs in this forum:
<http://www.beesource.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=003593;p=2#000043>

Swarming control in AHBs is not an easy matter. New queens and lots of free space are our best tools, IMO, but some swarmings still happen. More aggressive controls are very disturbing to AHBs, so we avoid them as much as possible.
Swarms may occur in the beginning/middle of the nectar flow, and splits aren't always a solution.

Two queen AHB colonies can probably become *very* aggressive, but it was already done a lot in South Africa some decades ago and almost everybody survived, as far as I know...


João
 
#34 ·
Joao,
Our colonies were dq for about 6 weeks and at begining of honey flow the old queen was killed or pulled with some brood to start a nuc. The determining factor was colony strength. If we thought they were a little too strong and might swarm the queen with 1-2 frames brood was removed. If they were not crowded we removed queen and killed her.
 
#35 ·
Reading all of this is interesting for us new beekeepers, I wonder if any of you ever just bought packages and introduced them to a existing hive (with the newpaper method) by just putting the package bee's in a few super's on the existing hive and a feeder can over the intercover hole. sounds good for these reasons, you will have a new young queen plus 2-3 pounds of bee's extra per hive, automatic early spring build up and you would still have the same number of hives without taking a hive and installing it with another hive for 2 queen hive. just some thought, like to hear what you all think.

[ December 08, 2005, 08:06 AM: Message edited by: TwT ]
 
#36 ·
Suttonbeeman,

If I understood correctly, you don't enter the main flow with two queens, and use them only to build up a very large colony.

Is that because your main nectar flow is short and you don't want useless brood demanding the bees' labor?

If the nectar flow were longer, would you keep the two queens until, say, a month before its end?

João
 
#38 ·
You want your population to peak with the honey flow. You do not want 2 queens laying at that time for a couple of reasons. First you don't want a peak population after the flow is over (to have to feed all winter) so you have a 6-8 week population peak that you want to baseline after the flow. Keep in mind your hive will peak about 43 days after your 2nd queen starts to lay. (21 days to lay, 21 days until peak brood is hatching) Secondly, you don't want a ton bees taking care of open brood during the honey flow or using that incoming nectar to free that brood. You want the maximum force in the field. Bees live 3 to 6 weeks during the summer. I have found they live longer in 2 queen units. Your goal therefore is to have a minimum of open brood to feed and care for and a maximum population of bees during the main flow that will dwindle before wintering to avoid have to feed a huge cluster. Keep in mind 2 queen units may have 60,000+ bees at peak as opposed to 25,000-30,000 in singles.

[ December 08, 2005, 11:18 AM: Message edited by: Joel ]
 
#39 ·
>I would think you would want your hive the strongest at the start of the flow, if Im wrong please explain.

As Joel said. It's all in the timing. You want the field population to peak at the flow, not the open brood to peak at the flow. As he said, that's a difference of approximately 43 days in theory. In reality, if there is no brood to care for going into the flow (either from a confined queen, no queen or stealing the open brood out of the hive for a split) those nurse bees will be recruited for foraging so you can cut 21 days off that 43 days.

You can't just setup a two queen hive any old time and therefore expect more honey.
 
#41 ·
I understand the (reasonable) point on avoiding too much laying in the last few weeks of the flow. It's also well known that larger colonies make more honey, because they can either allocate and reallocate task forces more quickly and efficiently, or free more bees to deal with gathering/storing nectar (because some labor costs are fixed and require about the same number of bees, no matter how large is the colony).

But I must have missed something, because I just can't see why timing would be more important for double queen colonies than for single queen colonies. Clearly, if you start stimulating SQCs too late, you'll get less honey than you could otherwise. If you start too early, you'll have to feed them more. Surely no doubts about that.

Is that any different in DQCs? If you had a colony with a single SUPERqueen, capable of laying twice as many eggs a day as the average queens, would the timing be more critical for that colony? If so, I think every colony would have a different timing, because each queen is usually different from the others, in a greater or lesser extent.

In fact, it seems to me, at first sight, that late stimulation should be *less* problematic for DQCs than for SQCs. Because if you agree that, say, 45,000 bees can be a good producing colony, a DQC would probably achieve this number several days earlier. It would not be the peak number for a DQC, but, in this case of a too late stimulation start, the honey loss would be less important.

What do you say?

João
 
#42 ·
A couple of points to consider Jaos. 1st. reread my previous post and think about the dynamics we are speaking of. Now consider one super queen (which does not exist) will have twice the nurse bees tied up taking care of double the brood through the honey flow. In addition to the honey those nurse bees burn taking care of brood and not making honey, the extra brood is chomping down more honey and pollen. Due to the increase in hive temps with extra bees more bees will be dedicated to bring in water and cool the hives. More bees are also tied up as house bees cleaning cells and gathering pollen for the double brood. Cut you maxed crop by 50% conservatively. Now you get through the flow and you have twice the bees to winter, subtract another 25%-30% for extra winter stores. Ever notice how bees know when to the flow is coming. The orginal hive has gone through the early season and whatever instinctive weather patterns drive them to populate (just like swarming, starts well before we see any signs) and consider that you now have 2 queens sharing the thousands bees. Certainly there are adjustments that have to made with 2 queens sending different messages, subtract say another 5 or 10%. Now you cut that double increase by 70,80% or more. The labor that is involved is not worth the 30% increase in production. Take the time to either read the Power study or the information in the Hive and the honey bee. It is a well established fact int theroy, studies and practice that timeing and limited 2 queen occupation of the hive is critical to success.
 
#43 ·
>I understand the (reasonable) point on avoiding too much laying in the last few weeks of the flow.

No. Not the last few weeks of the flow. The last few weeks BEFORE the flow. Those bees reared DURING the flow are just dependants using up resources (honey and pollen), gathering no honey and tying up bees that could be foraging taking care of them.

>It's also well known that larger colonies make more honey, because they can either allocate and reallocate task forces more quickly and efficiently, or free more bees to deal with gathering/storing nectar (because some labor costs are fixed and require about the same number of bees, no matter how large is the colony).

A large colony makes more honey. A large colony with no brood to care for will make twice that.

>But I must have missed something, because I just can't see why timing would be more important for double queen colonies than for single queen colonies.

Only because the two queens exagerate the same principles. You can do a cutdown split on a one queen colony and double the honey production if you time it correctly. You can do the same with a two queen colony except that you started with even more bees.

You can stimulate a one queen colony to rear more brood earlier by feeding pollen and syrup earlier and you will get more bees that will collect honey. You can simtulate a two queen colonly to rear more brood earlier by feeding pollen and syrup earlier and get even MORE bees that will collect honey. But in both cases you can end up with a lot bees after the flow that were raised DURING the flow that collected NO honey, tied up a lot of nurse bees that could have been foraging and burned up a frame of honey and a frame of pollen to make every frame of brood that was raised and are NOW eating up honey to stay alive when the flow is over. There are just twice as many of them in the two queen hive.

>Is that any different in DQCs?

Other than multiplying the advantages AND disadvantages by two, no. The timing is the same.
 
#44 ·
Joel told it like it is and I also agree with Mr Bush. You want the bees to peak at the begining of the flow! My flow here starts with Bush honeysuckle a week or two after fruit bloom and a week before black locust. (usually the last week of April/first week of May). Flow is usually over first week or two of July. Sometimes we get a good enough fall flow to make a little surplus in late Sept/early Oct.

Rick
 
#45 ·
Dear friends:

It seems to me that we are discussing only two points here, besides the usefulness of double queen colonies:

1) Is timing different in DQCs and in SQCs?

2) How long before the end of the flow should the laying be halted, so the presence of brood/young bees won't lessen honey producing?

About the point (1) Michael agreed with me by saying

> Other than multiplying the advantages AND
> disadvantages by two, no. The timing is the same.

I do believe that, although I'd replace the "multiplying by two" for a more cautious "increasing".

But the point (2) still seems disputable. First, I have to swear to you that I'm already pretty convinced that this procedure can be useful, at least for european bees (AHBs are much more rigorous about their queen, and I'm not sure that caging the queen for a long time will keep the bees working calmly). So, please, no needs to keep explaining me the benefits of this method


Michael said:

> No. Not the last few weeks of the flow.
> The last few weeks BEFORE the flow.
> Those bees reared DURING the flow are just
> dependants using up resources (honey and
> pollen), gathering no honey and tying up
> bees that could be foraging taking care
> of them.


If you are talking about few (two) weeks before the (very short/two-week) flow, I can agree, but, in this case, you are saying exactly the same as I did.

But if you refer to a longer flow, let's say 8 weeks like the Rick's, so I'm tempted to disagree. First, I think there's a little conceptual flaw in this reasoning (or I didn't get it correctly). Honey production doesn't depend on field bees only. Younger hive bees, the nectar processors (receivers and ripeners) are an equally important task force. Seeley (Wisdom of the Hive) found that as many as half of the bees in a normal colony (with a laying queen) can be involved in this task when the flow is heavy. That's in agreement with the considerations of Crane (Bees and Beekeeping) and Sammataro and Avitabile (Beekeeper's Handbook) for whom, in a large colony, about only half of the bees are foragers.

Nectar processors usually start their tasks by 10-11 days after the emergence, but, if there's no brood to tend, and there's a heavy flow to gather, wouldn't they start earlier? I think so, and I'm pretty sure that the studies of Lindauer and Seeley (among others) on labor allocating strongly support this view. If it's true, so the presence of young bees are truly beneficial in a no-brood colony.

Second, bees dye. And they not only dye, but they dye soon in the active season. Jim Fisher said recently that he works with the perspective of a lifespan between 45-60 days, but it sounds a little too optimistic. I checked some books, and found that Winston (Biology of the Honey Bee) talks about 38 days, Crane (Bees...) about 3.5-4 weeks, Caron (Honey Bee Biology and Beekeeping) about 4-5 weeks, and Morse (ABC & XYZ) about 4-6 weeks.

So, if you consider a developing period of 21 days, a fairly optimistic lifespan of 40 days, and a constant death rate (which is unreal), all the bees disappear in less than 9 weeks. It does not happen so quickly, in fact, because under such conditions not all bees become field bees, and those who keep doing house tasks get a longer lifespan. Anyway, it gives a good figure of how fast the population can decrease in the active season, when the colony is deprived of new eggs.

So, my point is that, for one side, young bees are important to honey production, for another, the colony probably shrinks very quickly when the queen is caged. So you will lose honey if you cage the queen (or remove one queen in a DQH) many weeks before the end of the flow. This idea only opposes the one presented by Michael, but doesn't answer the question I posed in item (2). Now, taking Moeller as another reference, (quoted by Crane in Bees..., and by Ambrose in The Hive and the Honey Bee), I read that he stated that four weeks BEFORE THE END of the flow is the right time to remove one queen in a DQC.

So far, I've presented only rhetoric and vague references, which sometimes are not very convincing (and often not even read), especially when written in a mistakefull English
. But maybe those bravehearts who had guts to read all of this will find it useful to take a look at a spreadsheet (MS Excel) I've just made, with a rough model of the colony development:
Colony model

There are two sheets, in fact. CDM1 has some periods highlighted with different colors, and commented. In CDM1, I used some parameters you may consider arguable, although I've tried to be realistic. Then I made CDM2, which is an unprotected sheet, where you can set the parameters as you like and get different results from the model. The sheets show the colony development by counting the daily increases in eggs laid, deaths, open brood, capped brood, nurse bees, and other [hive + field] bees. Nurse bees number is calculated according to Lindauer's estimation (quoted by Crane and Winston) of one nurse being capable of feeding 2-3 larvae (I took the average 2.5, so nurses = 40% open brood), but you may change that if you want. The model is very unreal in the start and in the end (colony with no bees), but I hope it gives a fairly good figure of what happens in between. Of course, it's a very simple model, based in averages and constant rates, and it was never intended to mirror the reality.

Well, since I have already written much more than the common sense would recommend, I think I won't do any worse in adding one more point:

(3) How much more honey can the beekeeper expect by caging the queen before the end of the flow?

I think, from what I've read from your posts and some books, that honey increase is mainly due to (a) extinction of the nurse tasks, freeing bees to participate in nectar gathering/processing, and (b) saving more honey because of no more need to feed the larvae.

Michael said:

> A large colony makes more honey.
> A large colony with no brood to
> care for will make twice that.

Would be "twice" a realistic figure?

Let's take a look at (a). How many bees are in fact freed by the extinction of the nurse job? At first thought, it may appear a lot. But, for a constant laying, the number of brood nurses tends to stabilize as the number of open brood stabilizes too, so nursing becomes a fixed cost for the the hive (and that's one reason why a large colony stores proportionally more honey than a small one). Qualitatively, you may reason that, when you cage the queen, the population is already at its peak, so the brood nurses are at the smallest possible percentage.

Quantitatively, it's sometimes difficult to visualize what really happens within such a dynamic group. But you can take a look at the model I pointed above. For the Lindauer's estimation, you'll find out that the percentage of bees in charge of brood in the peak of the season is only 5% of the total adults. So, probably no huge honey increases here.

Now, let's look at (b). From Winston (Biology...), we learn that a larva needs about 142 mg of honey and about the same weight of pollen to be reared. Assuming that the cost of gathering pollen is about the same of gathering nectar, I will consider that, roughly, each larva not reared saves about 300 mg of honey. I also assume that this is the total cost, including the pollen eaten by the nurses to produce food secretions, and the additional nectar spent in additional heating/fanning/water collecting due to the presence of the larvae.

If you take some 30 days as the useful period to produce honey with the queen caged, you'll get about 9 g of honey saved for each viable egg previously laid by the queen in each single day (in average). In other words,

Honey saved = 0.3 g x 30 days x ADL (average daily laying, in eggs/day)

If you consider ADL as 1,200 eggs, you'll get about 11 kg (24 lb) of honey saved. Or 13.5 kg (30 lb), for ADL = 1,500. Roughly, a shallow super in excess.

My conclusion is that one more supper of honey for each hive is indeed a very good result, although hardly a "double production", unless the flow/weather are very poor, or I'm grossly underestimating some aspect.

Just one more thing: since you don't know me, I'm afraid that this long post may appear to you as an arrogant flooding of data, intended to overwhelm and suffocate the discussion. Nothing is farther from the truth. I always appreciate your alert and critical posture. The long reasoning is only necessary for my own needs, because the topic is about a subject I'm not familiarized with - although general bee biology actually is a matter of interest to me. So, please (and I'm sure I wouldn't need to say this) feel completely free to point out the flaws and omissions in my ideas, references and calculations, so I can see it more clearly.

Best regards.

João
 
#46 ·
>Nectar processors usually start their tasks by 10-11 days after the emergence, but, if there's no brood to tend, and there's a heavy flow to gather, wouldn't they start earlier?

All the evidence and all of the people doing cut down splits have come to that precise conclusion.

> I think so, and I'm pretty sure that the studies of Lindauer and Seeley (among others) on labor allocating strongly support this view.

Exactly.

>If it's true, so the presence of young bees are truly beneficial in a no-brood colony.

Exactly.

>> A large colony with no brood to care for will make twice that.

>Would be "twice" a realistic figure

In my experience, yes, I think that is a realistic figure. You will free up a lot of bees and a lot of resources. Not only are the nurse bees foraging and bringing in more, but there is no brood consuming it. Also there is no need for pollen which frees up MORE foragers for nectar.

I'm sure this will vary by climate and length of flows. But most places you will get more honey with a cut down two weeks before the main flow. Experiment in your climate and see how it works out in pounds of honey.
 
#47 ·
Joao, You're way over complicating this simple but challenging manuever. Time your brood so the peak is at the beginning of your largest honey flow. Each queen will lay approximately 5 to 7 frames of brood in the 21 day period. The population of hatched bees will peak for 3-6 weeks about 49 days after setting up the unit giving you a maximum of foragers during any long flow. That will be approximatly 49 days from the start of the flow to put up the 2 queen unit. (21 for brood to lay, 21 for brood from both queens hatching together, 3-7 days for the queen to be released, accepted and start laying. If you have a realatively steady flow like we do in our region you should start your units at the 1st. major pollen source (dandelion here)when the weather is settled.

Never mind caging any queens, you won't have a chance of finding her in a hive with 60,000 bees at the beginning of the flow.

Beekeeping is about trusting experiance and trying your best to duplicate it, the science is already proven.
 
#48 ·
Ah-ha! I get the cutdown split for more honey idea. Why had I missed it last time I read it when doing it to break the brood cycle therby reducing varroa mites? Sounds like a good way to make spring increase.
One question on that though.
Will the change in population dynamics effect wax production. I have little drawn comb so I wouldn't want to slow down any emerging bees that may be making wax. So to focus my question, what age or type of bees are the wax producers?
 
#50 ·
hello everyone.
I found your answers truly amazing and extremely informative. thank you for your input.
If I understood the setup correctly, we are shooting for four deep supers for brood and queens. bottom two for first queen. an excluder. then two more deep supers for the second queen and an excluder then the honey supers on top. is this correct?
one more question would be should I have an additional entrance between third and fourth super to expedite movement, or just the main the main entrance is sufficient.

thanks
 
#51 ·
>If I understood the setup correctly, we are shooting for four deep supers for brood and queens. bottom two for first queen. an excluder. then two more deep supers for the second queen and an excluder then the honey supers on top. is this correct?

When I've done something similar, I just did one deep for each queen and tried to keep it from getting to congetsted. I put two bound excluders between or an excluder a shallow super and an excluder between, so the queens can't sting each other between the two. Both the top brood nest and the bottom brood nest need some kind of exit for the drones to get out. Either a hole in the box, or a notch in the bound excluder etc. With mediums I could do two mediums for each brood nest.

>one more question would be should I have an additional entrance between third and fourth super to expedite movement, or just the main the main entrance is sufficient.

I like to have one above the excluder for the feild bees whenever there is an excluder and an exit for the drones from the brood nest. Everything else is optional. It will need a lot of room for the traffic. There can be an amazing number of bees in a booming two queen hive.

But I prefer the long hive. I don't have to disturb all of those supers to get to the brood nests. I have a brood nest on each end and a stack of supers in the center. I can keep the brood nests open by pulling out frames of honey and feeding in empty frames and I can leave the supers alone and not disturb them so much.
 
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