> > I want to know if anyone out there only uses one brood
> > chamber?  What is the advantage of having 2 or 3 , could you not just make
> > certain that you supplied enough honey suppers, so the excess bee population
> > could hang out there, therfore they would not be crowding the brood box?
 
> A typical queen can lay at least 1500 eggs a day under optimal
> conditions, and they take about 21 days to emerge as workers.  There are
> about 1200 cells in a deep frame.
 
Hmmm.  I just counted the cells on a sheet of Permadent and got about 42
by 78 on each of 2 sides.  That amounts to about 6550 cells per standard
comb.
 
At nine combs per box, that yields ~59,000. Divided by 21 that is ~2800
cells available for brood and stores per day.  Ten frames provides more.
 
As I recall, the standard box was originally designed to provide enough
space for a normal queen to function well.
 
I've broken many many double brood colonies down manually at peak of
buildup to put all the brood and queen into a single for comb production
and seldom found a queen that had more than a standard box of brood.  Some
would have brood on 12 or so combs, but then it be comprised of some half
combs of brood, and, if consolidated, would fit on 9.  Most had about 7 or
8 frames full of brood, so after a yard of working 24 hives - many with 9
frames - we would have 3 or 4 extra supers with brood to  use for nucs.
 
We found that the singles from comb production did not winter as well as
the doulbles, but attributed that to the fact that the queen had to
compete with nectar for cells during the flow, since the supers were
entirely full of foundation.
 
Allen