Although Chris' response has been posted and excessively quoted twice
now, I don't think anyone has answered John's original question
regarding the effect a two queen system will have on swarming. Chris'
response that a two queen system is a sort of swarm control is actually
off the mark. Yes, separating a hive as described can be used as a
swarm control method, allowing the upper to raise a new queen and
recombining so the new queen daughter (once hatched and mated)
supersedes the queen mum below, so by the time the flow is on you have a
single queen colony with a new queen. I don't think this is what John
did and it certainly doesn't answer what John asked.
I suspect the 2-queen system that John has in mind is a system where two
colonies whose queens are likely unrelated are coaxed into coexisting in
a single stack in order to produce a prodigious honey crop. This system
isn't meant as a swarm control, in actuality it flirts with swarm
enticement which I believe is the gist of John's query. A proper answer
being, two queen hives push the envelope both in labor, beekeeping
skill, and swarm propensity. The beekeeper has to make sure that the
queens are young, that they have plenty of room for both of their brood
nests, and there has to be plenty of super room for honey and nectar. A
typical configuration can be 2 deep brood boxes, queen excluder, two,
three or more honey supers, another queen excluder, two more brood boxes
for the second queen, yet another queen excluder, and many more supers
on top of that! Such a configuration will literally require a step
ladder to work and can get quite dangerous working at a height of 10 to
15 feet! But the swarm control aspect (which is the question John
asked) is the same; young queens and uncongested brood chambers (which
in a 2-queen hive means plenty of honey supers).
I've already ranted about quoting, now I'll rant about searching the
archives. This topic has been covered extensively before (search the
archives for Sky Scraper Hive (or skyscraper) for starters). Or start
here:
http://listserv.albany.edu:8080/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9712E&L=BEE-L&P=R255&I=
-3
Aaron Morris - I think, therefore I bee!
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