The thing about queues does not relate just to logging - it relates to all communication between different multiprocessing processes, of which logging is just an example. The logging cookbook is not the place to provide tutorial information on e.g. multi-threading or multiprocessing and the various gotchas that can cause problems (e.g. the state of threading locks after fork). Whole books could be written about this stuff, and no doubt have been.

> Just to clarify, my understanding is that the child loggers on separate processes pass records to the main logger

No, you're mixing up loggers and handlers. Look at the basic and advanced tutorial in the stdlib docs, and e.g.

https://plumberjack.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/python-logging-101.html

to get an idea of the difference between them. The other posts on that site are also worth looking at, though many of those posts have been incorporated into the logging cookbook over time.

> Thanks for your patience with my inexperience.

You're welcome. If further discussion is needed, it's best to continue it on e.g. Stack Overflow or the python-list mailing list.