>                I attempt to run all hives with two queens for cut comb
>honey. Base hive is 3 full depth supers,old queen bottom,excluder with
>cleats on 3 sides to make available an entrance at the front for the bees of
>second box which has the second queen. Second excluder on second box,third
>box for honey and to act as a buffer to keep pollen out of comb honey. Works
>OK.Last season I tried 3 queens and it worked no trouble so I guess the
>number of queens that you run using the vertical system is limited by the
>height of the ladder that you own.
>                Have just received manual from Un.Minnesota Extension
>Service "Beekeeping in Northern Climates" which says on page 43"research
>shows the horizontal two queen system is more productive than the vertical
>two queen system" so I guess its back to the drawing board for me.
>                                                 RBB.
 
This sounds very similar to what I was doing. I originally obtained from an
article in American Bee Journal some years back.
 
The title of the article is "The Consolidated Double-Queen Brood Nest," and
the author was John Hogg, inventor of the half-comb comb-honey cassettes
you see advertised in US periodicals.  I have corresponded with Mr. Hogg
further about the two-queen system he described.
 
Yes, I did the same as you -- that is, I used one excluder between the two
brood boxes, and another above, just under the honey supers.  Since I was
supering with sections, I probably didn't need the upper one, but I never
tried the configuration without it.  Some comb-honey experts say that the
queen is unlikely to lay up into the sections  (but usually will go up if
you super with cut-comb frames).
 
I did see some occasional pollen in the sections, but not enough to be a
major problem.  Some customers actually ask for comb honey with pollen in
it.
 
If I were to use the plan again, I would add an extracting super (or cut
comb frames), medium depth, right above the brood chambers, and let this be
a buffer to ensure that little pollen and no brood end up in the sections.
I do hope to try this eventually, probably for cut-comb, though.
 
The main idea of this method is to keep the brood nest in the two deep
chambers that the bees are in throughout the winter.  In spring you
restrict your queen to the lower one, introduce a queen to the upper one,
and thereby obtain a large vigorous population to "push" right up into the
sections.  (In addition, you don't have the extra brood chamber to deal
with, as you do with "crowding-down" methods.)  I'd encourage anyone to try
it, if they're not having much luck with round or section comb honey, and
would be interested in others' results.
 
You can look back in the ABJ indexes around 86-88 if you'd like to refer to
John Hogg's original article(s).  Sorry, but I don't have the issue number
right now.
 
Thanks, Richard --    JG