Home▸Entomology & Insect Behaviour▸Two-Queen Colony Systems and Double Screen Boards

🐝 Two-Queen Colony Systems and Double Screen Boards

A 3D cutaway of a stacked two-queen hive, showing how a double screen board keeps two queens' colonies thermally linked but physically and pheromonally separated beneath one shared honey super.

Entomology & Insect Behaviour3DAdvanced60 FPS

A cutaway two-queen hive stack: a lower colony and an upper colony, each with its own laying queen, separated by a double screen board whose fine mesh blocks bees and queens while still passing warmth and scent — with one shared honey super combining both colonies' foraging effort on top.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

The double screen board is what makes running two queens in one stack safe. Remove it and the queens can meet and fight, collapsing the system back to a single colony — watch the queen-conflict counter and the surviving colony's honey yield when you try it.

🎮 How to Use

Toggle the screen board, switch the entrance layout between opposite-facing and stacked-same-direction, and adjust forager traffic. Watch how drifting between colonies and combined honey yield respond, then reset to reinstall the board and restore both queens.

💡 Did You Know?

Two-queen colonies were developed to squeeze more honey out of a single apiary footprint — two queens laying flat out can build a far bigger combined foraging force than either could alone, and that extra workforce is what fills the shared super so fast.

⚙ Under the hood

A 3D cutaway of a stacked two-queen hive, showing how a double screen board keeps two queens' colonies thermally linked but physically and pheromonally separated beneath one shared honey super.

beeshivequeenscolonyhoneycombsimulationbiologyThree.js

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install