Two Queens, One Hive

Here for your viewing pleasure is something not often seen.  This is a hive with two queens.  Click to see full size.

Now I've heard of cases where a superceded queen will not be killed off and the new queen will lay along side her mother.  But I've never heard of it lasting this long.

Last spring, I bought the marked queen (C shaped marking) from Zia Queenbee.  She ended up escaping upon being released in her new hive and I found her being balled at the entrance of another hive.  She has always looked greasy, I don't know why.  I was not surprised to find that she had been replaced last summer.  In her place I found a new queen, the one you see on the left.  After seeing her, I didn't keep looking.

Surprise surprise this morning, I was checking this hive for the first time this year and I found the old marked queen.  I looked on the other side of the frame and there was the new queen.  I did put the new queen on the same side as the old one so I could get a good picture, but other than that, what you see is what you get.  No tricks, no Photoshop, no special effects.  That is two queens in the same hive for at least six months including over winter. 

A New Hive Design, the Doublewide

I got this design for the most part from BWrangler. However, his design is not built like a standard deep box, rather his is built as a whole unit more like a topbar hive. As you can see here, this box is built exactly like a regular deep box, only twice as wide so it will be able to use standard tops and bottoms. You can see my standard migratory top/bottom design with my Parker Shims as landing boards. The only difference is that there are two of them side by side. This great open space leaves room for 22 frames if they are kept free of propolis. If there is too much propolis on the spacer parts of the end bars, it won't fit 22.

Below, you can see approximately how the hive would look during the production season, and indeed any other time of the year. Boxes are stacked up just like normal except they are in tandem. It would be possible to use two of the double wide boxes or more to super the hive, but that would make it nigh on impossible to get to the bottom of the hive because a box with 22 frames should weigh somewhere in the range of 200 lbs.

The benefits if they are what I'm told they are will be quite useful. First, the hive will never be more than three boxes tall which makes it easy to work. Secondly, according to BWrangler, this type of hive is his most productive. I hope that it will support a large broodnest and the ability to draw good brood comb for starting a bunch of new hives. I'm planning on starting around six this year if I can swing it. I can split the four I have into four more, and I have already ordered 2 nucs from FatBeeMan. One idea is to take one or two frames of brood from each hive (from each according to his ability) and be able to spin off one new hive per week during good times.

At this point, I just need to get all the tops/bottoms, shims, boxes, and frames ready to go so I'm not scrambling to catch up with hives that are about to swarm this spring.

Sol Parker