Raising two queen cells using the demaree method and no queen

[user 3509]

We have an extremely strong gentle colony on double brood with four supers. If we remove the queen and put her in a nuc is it possible to split the brood boxes as though performing a demaree, with all the supers and queen excluders in between, and a separate entrance for the top box? The bees will produce queen cells in both boxes, but all the worker bees will be able to travel up and down the colony, and we will still have our full honey gathering force. Leaving only one queen cell in each box will the bees tend both queen cells? Once hatched the virgin queens can leave by their separate entrances for mating. Can it then be run as a two queen colony until such time as we want to split them?

 

[masterBK]

In the absence of queen pheromones they will likely produce lots (possibly more than a dozen) emergency cells in both brood boxes which will need to be found and reduced to one in each box. Not sure I would go down that route. Better in my opinion to do the normal demaree where under low levels of Q pheromone in the top box just a few decent sized q cells will be produced and then take two or three nuclei out of top box about two days before virgin queen emergence. This way queen carries on laying so no brood gap (of several weeks) which would cost you foragers and honey yield in a few weeks time.