Hello Rick and all.  Please let me clarify somewhat --
 
>
>A question for you at this point: If I understand your description, starting
>from the bottom: bottom board with normal entrance, brood chamber with a
>laying queen, a queen excluder, an extracting super, another queen excluder,
>a brood chamber with laying queen with its own entrance 180 degrees from
>bottom entrance and created by offsetting the brood chamber, another queen
>excluder, and your comb honey supers? Did you always have an extracting
>super between the two hives? Did I miss or add any pieces?
 
I'm sorry for the confusion.  The lower unit will retain most of the
foraging-aged bees, at the beginning.  They are used to using the regular
front entrance.  The original queen is still laying down there, too.  So
they don't have much room in a single brood box.  To keep it from getting
clogged with nectar, I would give them a medium super, above an excluder.
This gives them some storages space while the upper unit's new queen gets
her nest going for a few weeks.  Actually, with some colonies I had to add
even another honey super to the bottom unit, as it continues to build up
rapidly, and the bees just need space.
 
When you "unite" the two brood chambers, with excluder between, you would
remove the lower colony's honey super(s), and set it atop the 2-3 comb
honey supers you immediately supply. (I put a sheet of newspaper under it
as a precaution.) Or, you could make the medium super the "first" super
above the brood chambers, and put the sections above that.  That might be
better for keeping pollen (or the upper queen, if no excluder is used
there) out of the honey supers.
 
It is important, I think, to keep the front AND rear entrances, as
described.  That way the cranky old foragers are still returning to their
usual place, and it is less alarming to them.  This probably (I'm pretty
sure) helps lessen the chance one or the other queen being "assassinated."
>
>
>>In autumn I would just remove the queen excluder and let the bees fill the
>>upper brood chamber with stores for winter.  The colonies going into winter
>>were of course very strong, so it worked out pretty well all 'round.
>>
>>
>>Best regards, --   JWG
>>
>
>How did you convert back to a single queen overwintering hive?  Did you kill
>one of the queens (which one?)? Did you just let them decide on their own?
 
By removing the excluer, bingo, you unite them and they will keep one or
the other queens, or even both for a while!  If you know one is somehow
preferable, you could hunt the other one down.  Or, you could even remove
one with some brood to a nucleus and overwinter them above a full
sized-colony.  Some northern beekeepers have been able to do this regularly
to their advantage.
>
>Rick Grossman
>Oregon, USA