Phil wrote

>> The workers do not mix in the supers but work exclusively above their 
>> queen.

Dave wrote

> I have done side by side with full colonies, but nowhere near as many as 
> yourself (half a dozen) it is a long time ago, but I never noticed what 
> you are describing.

Here in Australia about 15 -20 years ago there were many people trying two 
queen hives.  They had a 10 or 12 frame brood box which was split in half in 
the bottom.  A queen in each side then an excluder.  What Phil wrote was 
commonly found.  If you looked at a hive and there were only bees on one 
side of the honey super, then you knew that there was only one queen in the 
bottom.  Not sure if it was because the bees did not mix or just that they 
were working only above the brood as is sometimes the case.

If the condition were good then the bees  were happy with two queens.  Once 
conditions went off then they tended to kill one of the queens.  Some used 
to have another small super, such as an ideal, which was divided in the same 
way as the bottom box above the excluder so as to try and separate the bees 
a little more.  With his configuration, when the conditions started to go 
off, the super/s above the ideal were removed and the lid, which was flat or 
also had the divide in, was put on to divide the colony back into two 
separate units within the one box.

The honey super/s were added when conditions were again favourable.  They 
were a lot of work and there are not many who persisted in running these two 
queen hives.  When conditions were right they certainly had large bee 
numbers and did produce a lot of honey but from a personal perspective I was 
never sure that it was better than two individual hives.

Trevor Weatherhead
AUSTRALIA 

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