BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER > REQUEENING & RAISING NEW QUEENS
Banking Queens - how to
TheHoneyPump:
Here is a topic of varied methods and varied successes.
What is your way of banking queens?
How long do you usually bank them?
How about the longest banked time?
Ben Framed:
Good topic....
TheHoneyPump:
In a double deep.
Above a queen excluder of a queen-rite colony that has fresh emerging brood frames below (nurse bees). Cages are set in a holding frame. A frame of open brood is placed in one side. A frame of pollen and open nectar is placed on the other side.
Before placing the cage frame into the hive spray down the nearby frames and bees with mix of sugar syrup and honeyBhealthy. Do not spray the queens or caged. The smell confuses everyone and averts any initial agressions to the queen cages.
Bank for days, weeks, months. In fair weather. Fall/winter banking is a whole different ball game.
Michael Bush:
I set up a queenless hive (one eight frame medium box) with room for a banking frame that holds over a hundred JZBZ cages if I want. The secret is to catch all the queens the same day and put them all in at the same time. Don't ever add more queens later as the newer queens will have more pheromones and the bees will kill off the older queens. The bees eventually raise a queen from the brood they have from when I set them up. So far I haven't had them kill the cages queens, but I catch the new queen as soon as I see her (which is usually after she's laid up a lot of brood). I have banked them for as long as 7 months and they still made great queens. I did this experiment expecting that the quality would fall off in time, but it did not. What matters is how SOON you bank them not how LONG you bank them.
I have banked them into winter a ways, but never all winter. I have not succeeded in that yet. But I keep experimenting with it. I got them through to December once and then sold them in a warm spell to someone in Texas.
Bill Murray:
Michael, how long do you let them lay before banking 2 weeks?, or longer?
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