I recently read the April "Bee Culture" article on a two queen system by
Serge Labesque.  To quickly recap this article for those that do not
read "Bee Culture", Serge put forward his technique of combining two
hives to form a double queen colony.  Below is an ordered description of
the setup:

Inner and top covers
Supers as appropriate
Queen excluder with entrance
Hive body with queen rite colony
Queen excluder with entrance
1-2 supers
Queen excluder
Hive body with queen rite colony
Bottom board

Serge indicates that the supers separating the two colonies will provide
a buffer space and "the bees of the two hives will intermingle without
fighting".  It's not that I don't trust Serge but this violates a few
things that I have been taught.

1.)  Why wont the bees fight without some time to transfer taste without
coming into direct body to body contact with each other, such as is the
case with using newspaper or a small mesh screen?

2.)  Why wont the queens detect each other's pheromone and set out to do
perpetual combat, never being able to find each other, thus disrupting
egg production?

Any thoughts?  I like this system if it works as advertised; very simple
and slick.  The other method I have heard of, the Snelgrove method,
isolates the pheromones of one queen from the other, save for maybe a 24
hour declining period during a transfer of field bees from one box to
the other.  This, from my uneducated perspective, seems to be by purpose
and makes the Snelgrove more complicated and time consuming.  Would
appreciate hearing discussion on this.

Thanks,

Mark

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