Using a full sized hive as a double nuc?

[Spear]

Was at a beek club meeting tonight and it was about expanding your apiary with splits and nucs. It was mentioned that I split can be put in a full size hive as long as you put a divider board to restrict the bees to 4 or 5 frames. Now I was thinking that in a 12 frame hive I can put a divider board in and put 5 frames on both sides and a queen or queen cell in each side and they should get along just fine, right? Can I use a divider that is the same length as the frames and the queens wont go under it to kill each other or Should the divider board go right down to the bottom of the hive (touch the bottom board)? Also I'm guessing that I will have to have an entrance reducer that will make 2 smaller entrances out of the one big one - one on each end - so that the bees will know which side of the hive is theirs.
I want to try my hand at queen rearing next year so this will be the most cost effective method for me.

[DMLinton]

The bees cannot be allowed to mingle or the queens will battle and one or both will end up dead.  The idea of dividing a full sized box into two or more nucs is economy - for every full size box, you have two, three, four or even five nucs.  The only additional equipment required is divider boards to completely isolate each compartment and a system of individual tops for each nuc.  In cooler climates, the bees in adjacent compartments will cluster against the same divider board effectively improving cluster heating efficiency.

[Vance G]

I have deep and medium boxes where I have cut 1/4" channels as deep as the frame rest so I can have three --three frame nucs or two five frame nucs.  The divider is 1/8" tempered Masonite and it completely separates the partitions.  I have double screened bottoms on them and currently have splits accepting new queens and being heated by a strong hive below.  The whole fam damily is wrapped and each partition has its own entrance.  Works great.  When the three frames outgrow their lodging, one gets moved to a divided deep five frame nuc and one partition is moved to the middle of the box and the other removed and I fill in with frames and grow them to five frames pretty rapidly with the heat from below.  When the strong colony needs a super things get a little high and the wrap just stays on the splits and the top two boxes of the hive below.  When it is warmer, the nucs are moved to a new location and given a divided second box.  With the shared heat they grow to ten frame size rapidly and then can be given their own 10 frame box or a queen excluder and be supered up for honey production as a double queen hive.  The main advantage is shared heat in my end of the frozen northland. 

[ScituateMA]

In you 2 queen system, do you put only one queen excluder between box or one box wirh queen and excluder and ahoney super and second queen excluder and second box with second queen ? I wonder if just one excluder between queens is enough

[Vance G]

You can just put an excluder over the brood box/s and super over it with no trouble from the bees.  If one queen fails the bees will all gravitate to the other.  Go to frenchbeefarm.com and under articles they discuss the method.

[Jim134]

In you 2 queen system, do you put only one queen excluder between box or one box wirh queen and excluder and ahoney super and second queen excluder and second box with second queen ? I wonder if just one excluder between queens is enough

A two Queen system is a whole another subject and I do not want to hijack your thread.



                BEE HAPPY Jim 134 :)

[jayj200]

I did that for a swarm box and it workwd juat fine. at two weeks I removed the divider board.
they then had a 10 f deep to play in
jay