Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => DOWN UNDER BEEKEEPING => Topic started by: squidink on October 27, 2011, 05:52:30 am
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This is my first double queen hive i set up 3 weeks ago. I took a peeky today and impressed with the girls! 4 frames are already 1/2 packed with honey!
Ben
(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f58/prodigydiscus78/doublequeen.jpg)
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looks like one of Max's old hives! :)
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Spot on Corey! 8-)
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only cos i've got 2 myself!
one of which swarmed 3 times over 2 weeks recently!!!
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Did you guys both buy hives off Max? With bees? I was thinking about picking up an extra colony off him. Would you say those bees are prone to swarming? 3 swarms in 2 weeks is pretty swarmy(?). Did you manage to recapture any of your swarms? I had 3 swarms go from my 2 hives but I managed to catch one.
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Let me qualify my comments:
A week after buying these 2 hives, i was hit by a car, spend time in hospital and in a sling. So despite putting a super on before I couldn't manage these hives for 5 weeks. right in the middle of swarming season. So I blame it on poor management.
Yes the hives were very full, and already had queen cups but didn't swarm until about 6 weeks after I got them home. I like to think that if i had been able to change around the brood boxes and create a sense of space, this wouldn't have happened.
Having said that, it was unknown how old the queens were, so I have decided to requeen them on Nov 15.
If you buy, i would suggest requeening if you can get your hands on some.
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Corey,
Look right, look left then right again. I hope you are OK mate.
Yanta
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I hope everything is ok Corey!
Nice old bloke young Maxy is!
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Update, 5 weeks later I extracted the middle super which was full of honey!
I have since added 3x 1/2 size supers for honey and had a little peek today and all 24 frames are
1/2 capped with honey! Worth messing around with a double queen hive!
Photo taken tonight.
Happy New year peoples!
cheers
ben
(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f58/prodigydiscus78/dblequeen.jpg)
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:shock: holy s**t thats a big hive!
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Thats the only problem with double queening is the height of the hive. Its as stable as a big rock but i dont want it towering over the fence as some kids might see it and want to push it over! All 4 brood box's are jammed packed full of bee's, in hine sight I should have gone with 10 frame box's or made up some 12 frame box's.
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Nice pics.
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Hey there squidink
have you thought about doing this instead if height its an issue?
(http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/4203/6a00e550880f06883301053.th.jpg) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/72/6a00e550880f06883301053.jpg/)
Uploaded with ImageShack.us (http://imageshack.us)
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I like the looks of that! thanks mate for the photo. cheers ben
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That looks awesome the-ecohouse.com :-D
Is it 4 brood boxes on the bottom and 2 honey supers on top?
I can't see an excluder so do they all share the top boxes??? I thought bees from different hives would fight???
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hey there Harpo
yep that's right 2 brood boxes and then excluder then shared honey supers.
last year i did this with four hives :) after the main flow just to test it. the bees were fine, no fighting.
they all still go to their respective hive entrances,...seems to work fine?
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believe it or not the bees seem to become accustomed its one hive with two queens for the most part you seperate the queens so they dont kill one another and you have a full blown hive. They say a very strong hive will bring in more honey then two average hives so there ya have it :) You can spray the bees down with honey b healthy to mask their differences and once they clean themselves up they are off and running just be careful the honey b healthy is heroin to bees it can cause robbing issues Chris
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...having a double queen hive they sure know how to pull the nectar i'm surprised
Its not more polular with small time bee keepers..
I have a question if say the queen on the bottom brood box dies (ie gets squashed) will the bee's produce some queen cells to replace her or will the pheromones from the top brood box queen possibly inhibit the bottom bee crew from making a new queen?
A question I can’t find in any bee book or even on the net!
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g'day squidink
nah its wont inhibit them
most likely they will just re-queen themselves, as there would most likly be eggs.
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Hey there squidink
have you thought about doing this instead if height its an issue?
(http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/4203/6a00e550880f06883301053.th.jpg) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/72/6a00e550880f06883301053.jpg/)
Uploaded with ImageShack.us (http://imageshack.us)
Very nice, ecohouse!
Do you start each queened hive separately and then combine - or simply start as one large hive?
Do you ever see robbing behavior from one side to the other?
It seem like both sides would need to stay about the same size and grow at about the same rate for it to be successful. Do the bees stay in balance naturally?
So many questions...would love to try this.