Long Lang with shared super

Modifications & Building Bee Hives
1

Ok bee brains trust, what are your thoughts on this? :smiley:

I have a long Lang 40 frames, with a follower board splitting the hive into two with a queen each side.

I currently have the flow super on one side. I want to move the flow super so it straddles both hives.

There will be bees in the super when I move it so I want to reduce the fighting when the second hive also has access to the super. If I put a couple of sheets of newspaper, with a few cuts and sprinkled with sugar water to delay the introduction of the second hive bees into the super, would this work? Does anyone have experience doing this?

There will be a Queen excluder in place.

The nectar flow here is very very slow at the moment, the bees are not putting on weight.

I plan to split the first hive a couple of times soon so it will reduce the strength of the hive.

I have a second flow super I can put on top of the first super if they need more space down the track.

This setup allows me easy access to the brood for inspections.

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2

I would replace newspaper with plenty of sugar syrup when combining two queened colonies. Bees find it more entertaining than local politicians’ cappers. :grinning:

To be honest, benefits of having two-queen setup in with one super and splits in weak honey flow escape me. If it was strong flow expected, than yes, but having 4-5 supers on top in this case is more traditional approach. And split latter returning to single-queen setups.

Anyway, you may find this document useful as an initial source of information about two-queen setups.

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3

Thanks @ABB.

Yeah the main reason for the setup is the ease of getting to the brood without lifting. Hence the long hive.

I am splitting as family are after a nuc (they are getting a flow hive for Xmas). Since it looks to be a crap honey flow so far I might as well get some new queens out it :laughing:

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In this case, would further modification of horizontal by attaching supers to each side be more beneficial?

5

Thanks yes a good idea.

I have tried various permutations of this but haven’t been happy with the result.
The main issue here where I live is wax moth and a few mm out means they can hide. I dont have the skills to fix that :grimacing:

So this arvo I move the super to a 2 queen arrangement. Hopefully the newspaper and sugar will arrest any fighting. Here’s hoping!! :pray:

6

This might be useful or not - I had a look at the start of it ages ago, and it sounds like what you’re trying to do. I cant’ tell you about the rest of it though as i didn’t watch it. Good luck:

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7

Silly question:

Is a follower board the same thing as a dummy board?

Thanks

8

Yes a follower or dummy board is used to manage space in a top bar or long Lang.