Graham Kleinschmidt has carried out research on queen banking. He has a paper titled "Banking of Queen Honey Bees" and is 14 pages long. He looked at free flying hives both queenless and queenright; non flying packages with 1.5kgs bees and mailing cages. His final sentence is "This research indicates that queen bee storage in nucleii is preferable but as such storage is not always practical, queen banking might be used for the equivalent of one queen production cycle (20-25days) with the minimum of detrimental affect if queen bees are properly stored. Flying colonies of quiet temperament, preferably queenless and broodless or queenless and broodright and fed pollen and sugar ad lib provided the best results." If anyone wants a copy by snail mail let me know and I will photocopy it. Trevor Weatherhead AUSTRALIA