> Swarming, supering, queen excluder use are are completly differnt in single over doubles.

Anyone familiar with beekeeping history knows that the single Langstroth hive was the standard a hundred years or so ago. The question at the time was whether to enlarge the single (as the Dadants did) or use two Langstroth deeps for brood, like the Roots promoted. 

The double deeps caught on, once beekeepers produced more extracting honey than comb honey, because of the reasons you mention. By switching to a big, multi-story hive -- problems with swarming, supering, and queen excluders all went away. Don't know why you would want to go back to that but whatever. At least one commercial beekeeper I know runs single brood boxes and they just put on all the supers at once. 

I use two deeps for brood, no excluder and throw on 3 mediums as soon as they look ready to expand from the two deeps. Once the flow hits, I go around and redistribute the supers so that the  better hives have more, and supers are not wasted on hives that are slow. When I used to run all deeps, most hives were in three, four, or five during the main honey flow. Basically enough space for maximum brood area and a hundred pound average harvest. I usually have two or three harvests.

Wintering in singles used to be common as well, but the chief advantage to two or three deeps for winter is that sometimes in spring you can't get equipment to the hives, and with this arrangement the stuff is already there. You can reverse the boxes to get them to use the empty combs below, or let them expand downwards. I don't worry about swarming at all with this plan.

PLB

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