I am relaying to the list the edited contents of two off-list messages with the
permission of the author.
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Interesting post.  One fall while doing inspections for interstate migration a
beekeeper and I found 4 laying queens in one colony.  Interesting situation and
have not seen that many any other time.  We had a beekeeper here in MN who would
double up his colonies for wintering in the fall - just stacked them up together
without newspaper or anything.  He said that in the spring when he split the
hives back apart that about 10% had two laying queens - he ordered 10% fewer
queens than the colonies he had from experience.  When I asked if he had ever
tried to run some of those colonies with two queens to see if they would produce
more honey he said " I never thought of that just figured I didn't need to buy
so many queens."

There is at least one beekeeper in the Canadian prairies who runs in a second
queen when he takes off the first supers with a fume board.  What he does is
spray both the queen and the colony with a solution of vanilla and water and
runs the queen in the front of the colony.  With the disturbance of the fume
board and the vanilla masking the scent of the colony most of the time both
queens lay for some time in the colony and many overwinter that way and go on to
produce nice honey crops the next year.  I have not tried this but could this be
the "secret" method of two queening with very little additional manipulation?

Now this issue is interesting but the possible similarities with IFA may
actually raise a red flag.  It appears to me from reading some articles on the
fire ant situation with multiple queens that the ants simply cannot distinguish
one queen or one colony from another and in effect you get these very large
"super colonies" that encompass all the fire ant colonies in an amazingly large
area.  The implication to me is that if that were to happen with bees that the
whole yard would have to be considered as one colony and bees would move freely
from one colony to another which would have some implications for colony
management that may not be all good.  Because of this it would be a direction to
proceed with some caution but I am not saying we shouldn't explore this aspect
of honey bee biology and beekeeping just to be aware that there could be
negative effects as well as benefits.  My question is in a nutshell " Is this in
essence the state of that rouge cape bee strain that is causing problems in
South Africa?"  If it is we don't want it but we don't know if it is or not or
will lead in that direction.
Again a very interesting area of honey bee biology that has many implications
for honey bee management and beekeeping.

allen

http://www.internode.net/HoneyBee/