Experimenting with a double queen hive. Any advice?

578 Views 2 Replies 2 Participants Last post by cconnell, May 12, 2019

cconnell

Discussion Starter · May 12, 2019

Today during inspection of hives I found a situation i have encountered before. Full hive and fine a queen cell, and lots of queen cups (all but one empty). This hive is getting large and I'd like to make it a honey producer. In any case, I don't want it to swarm.

I used the something like the Demaree method to set up a double queen hive situation. From the bottom up, this is what I have: two deep boxes of brood, QE, one medium super, QE, one deep with 4 frames pulled from the deeps below (with the cell), empty comband some with honey, and a couple of frames of foundation, and then inner cover (with opening) and outer cover. The new queen will emerge, and the two hives should, in theory, operate together.

I've never had a double queen hive before. Anything I should or should not do?

Reading some other stuff just now, I'm wondering if that cell is in fact a supersedure cell. It was low on the frame, but not the absolute bottom. Not the classic area for a supersedure cell, but now I realize it could be. It was I believe the only queen cell, though one of the cups Maybe I should reassemble as it was? Hmmmm.

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little_john

· #2 · May 12, 2019

cconnell said:
From the bottom up, this is what I have: two deep boxes of brood, QE, one medium super, QE, one deep with 4 frames pulled from the deeps below (with the cell), empty comb and some with honey, and a couple of frames of foundation, and then inner cover (with opening) and outer cover. The new queen will emerge, and the two hives should, in theory, operate together.

I've never had a double queen hive before. Anything I should or should not do?

Looks good. I've been running 3-queen hives (one queen at the bottom, with two 5-frame nucs on top) using a very similar method for a few years now. As long as the queens are kept apart and each colony has it's own entrance in separate directions, things should be ok. With my set-up (only one brood box) I've found that swarming is more-or-less eliminated - presumably due to an increased level of Q pheromone ?

You might want to give some thought to how you will check for, and remove honey as it's capped - which is not something I have to worry about (I wish ...), and also how you will go about splitting the stack at some time in the future. With nucs, I just pull 'em off and set them on their own stands - your set-up may be slightly more involved. It'll certainly be heavier ...

Very best of luck.
LJ

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cconnell

Discussion Starter · #3 · May 12, 2019

Thanks, L_J. I always appreciate your insights.

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