Long hives swarming before honey flow.

[The15thMember]

Lois,
If you try to run two colonies out of the same long box...
1. one on each end
2. each with their own entrance
3. honey in the middle
4. queen excluder on each side of the honey.
Won't the two worker populations fight in the honey middle ground, or worse, cross over to the other side and kill the other queen?
I have always heard of a solid divider board between the two, or a double screened bottom board where the two populations cannot reach, pass through, nor touch each other.

They absolutely could.  There are ways to run double queen hives, but I'm not personally familiar with doing it.  I think HoneyPump has done double queen hives before, maybe he will respond. 

[Bill Murray]

They have around 8 frames of brood already. We are having a little honey flow from the red maples. They are putting up nectar. It's not enough to cap, but sure enough for the hives to expand.

This is my point If I have 9 frames of brood and 2 feed frames and I pull 3 frames 2 brood and 1 feed, I install 2 frames of drawn comb and 1 frame undrawn foundation. If I install 3 frames undrawn foundation They wont draw that out quick enough this time of year and will swarm. Drawn comb is your most useful asset and ally in the situation you are describing. To expand a little further. If im short on comb I feed, feed, feed, certain hives to do this for me. Granted it costs sugar and time but in the long run more than pays for its self.

[loisl58]

Lois,
If you try to run two colonies out of the same long box...
1. one on each end
2. each with their own entrance
3. honey in the middle
4. queen excluder on each side of the honey.
Won't the two worker populations fight in the honey middle ground, or worse, cross over to the other side and kill the other queen?
I have always heard of a solid divider board between the two, or a double screened bottom board where the two populations cannot reach, pass through, nor touch each other.

There were no problems for quite a while. The queens were born about same time and one came back in the other side of Queen excluder.
After a month I moved middle queen down to west.
So there was Brood, QE, honey, QE,  Brood.
I think queen on 1 side east swarmed. So I removed QE. And then Queen on west moved into honey area so I took other QE.

She has full run of hive now. Will be interested to see how far she will lay. May be ok may be not.

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