Just one excluder. I used to run Consolidated Double-Queen brood nests when I was pushing the bees into making section comb honey. (This two-queen idea was covered by John A. Hogg in ABJ a few years ago.) In this system you have the usual two brood chambers, but have a queen laying in EACH ONE. This allowed me to super with comb honey supers easily with great results. 1. In spring a nuc is made up (2-3 brood combs, 2 of food) in a brood box and set above the parent colony with a screen board between and small entrance provided for upper unit, in back. Queen is introduced to upper unit. ( ~ April 15-20, NY) 2. Make sure lower unit has plenty of food or feeder, then an excluder&super later when needed. Heat from lower unit will help development of the upper one. Some brood can also be raised up from below to ease congestion. 3. After upper unit's population starts expanding well (say 7-8 frames of bees and brood), the screen board is removed. A full sheet of newspaper is laid atop the lower brood chamber. Than an excluder goes over this. Then the upper brood chamber goes on the excluder, then is pushed forward enough to supply a 3/8" opening along the top rear of the excluder for an entrance to the upper colony. Another sheet of newspaper goes on top of that, and the excluder, super(s) from the lower colony. You can tack a strip above the rear entrance to keep rain out. Both queens remain and continue laying (ideally) all season, or at least for a few weeks. These colonies get really strong and can get quite "swarmy" in certain seasons when run for comb honey. But if you can keep them home they'll really plug out the sections nicely, and the supers will pile up. I think it's easier in some ways than the usual Killion comb honey management. For extracted honey results could be spectacular, considering all you're doing is adding a $6-10 queen. It's quite a sight to see -- this is a real bee-machine; lots of flight from front and back at the same time and bees bubbling out all over. Got to keep them supered up well. They'll make use of every square inch of those brood chamber combs The lower queen will fill the combs with brood often clear across the hive; the upper one won't have quite so much room because the bees will want to store nectar in the outer combs. This is not a major drawback; this new queen will likely be the one going into winter to start up the next season. Either before or after the main honey flow you just take the excluder out from between the brood chambers and that's that. You end up with a high population for wintering. An advantage to this is that if you have a queen fail in a colony it doesn't take it out of production, there being a second queen. Plus you can split the colony into two afterwards or take away the less desirable/older queen - whatever. Instead of a "boughten" queen you could use your own queen cells to establish the upper colony. Lots of potential options. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- Note: Any plan like this should be used experimentally (at first), as its success is likely to be dependent on timing and local conditions. - JWG