Hello All,
There have been a lot of posts dealing with requeening, using some type of
hive division.  Sometimes I will divide a colony by taking one hive body off
and setting it up somewhere else.  The field bees will return to the parent
colony and the split will be largely comprised of young bees that will
accept a new queen or do a fairly good job raising their own.  However I
don't always want second colony, then I will use a double screen and make
the split in place in order to requeen.   This is especially good in early
spring when the nights are still cold and the heat from the parent colony
will warm the nuc.  The method I use is fairly simple but requires two
pieces of equipment; a queen excluder and double screen division board.  I
will remove two or three frames of brood from the colony and gently shake or
brush off all the bees and  place the frames in an empty hive body.  I try
to replace them with drawn comb which gives the parent queen more room to
lay.  I usually take frames that have the majority of the cells capped
hopefully with a few that are ready to hatch.  If I want the bees to raise a
queen I use at least one with eggs or a swarm cell if I find one.  The
frames should have some uncapped brood but they should be predominantly
capped.  I then place a queen excluder on top of the parent colony and the
new hive body above that.  Young house/nurse bees will head up to the brood
above the excluder.  A few hours later I will come back and replace the
queen excluder with the double screen.  I am sure that the queen is still
below and the bees above are young and won't fly back to the parent colony.
 The next day I will introduce the new (caged) queen.  Eventually more
frames will be added to the hive body and the when the new colony is strong
the screen board can be replaced with the queen excluder (for a two-queen
system) or allow them to merge.  Most often the queen on the top will be the
survivor.  If something goes wrong anywhere along the way the parent colony
is still functioning.

The big drawback to this is the number of excluders and screen boards
required.  If you want to do 10 or 20 colonies at a time you would have to
invest over $300 in additional equipment.  The average price of double
screen, with shipping, is over $15. To me they are a valuable tool and worth
having around.  I am a "pack rat" by nature and tend to save everything.
 All of my screen boards are made from scrap materials.  My favorite method,
and I believe the simplest way to make one, is to convert an old inner
cover.  I simply cut a 5 x 8 inch hole in the center and cover both sides
with 1/8 inch or smaller mesh hardware cloth (metal screen).  I have
salvaged some screen from old bee packages.  I then take strips of wood 1/2
x 3/4 inch and nail it around the edge of the screens and also around the
edge of the cover on the shallow side.  I then make two 45 degree cuts about
2 inches apart in the strip, drive a small nail in the center of the 2 inch
piece to create an entrance that you can open or close.  You can do this at
all four sides if you like.  I also like to slip a small piece of wood
between the center of the two screens  to ensure they don't touch.

If you need one or two it is probably not worth the effort, so  you can just
buy them.  If you need to make a number of these from scratch then you are
better off starting with 1/4 inch plywood. But, if you would like to make
just a few the inner cover conversion works well.  Actually you can buy new
inner covers for about 1/3 the price of a double screen and convert them.
 It can be a good rainy day or winter project. Try a few, it only costs some
time.

You can also make some really good nuc boxes by cutting up old hive bodies
or full depth supers.  You just need two good corners on the same (long)
side.

Now if I could just figure out why supers are slightly larger (~1/2 inch)
then the nearest size piece of dimensional lumber ( 1x10, 1x6, etc.) forcing
you to use the next larger size.

Ron Bogansky
Kutztown, PA  USA