Hi:

I'd like to hear from the commercial queen/package producers on this one.
I've seen several methods used by them, and most have strong opinions about
what works and what doesn't.

My own experience suggests that there isn't just one way of doing this, but
there are things to avoid.

Banking Queens:

1.  Queenless Colony - often stated as the "proper" way to bank queens.

        Obvious advantage, the bees don't have a queen and presumably want to
raise a new one.  Also, the absence of an old queen in the box may reduce
attack attempts on the banked queens.

        Obvious disadvantage, the queenless bank may not forage vigorously, and it
appears that brood is needed or helps to stimulate care of the queens.  So,
if you want to keep the queens banked for any length of time, you may have
to keep putting in frames of brood and young bees and stimulate the colony
by feeding it.

        If you are like many of us, you get busy and this slides.  Soon you have a
queen bank with only a few old bees left to tend the queens, and eventually
all of the queens are dead or in bad shape.

2.  Queenright colony

        Advantage, the colony has brood, young bees, and should forage (weather
and food resources permitting) without any help from the beekeeper.

        Disadvantage, you do want to keep the old queen away from the banked
queens.  Some use double screens (safest), many just toss in a queen excluder.


Using both methods, we have at times had great success, and occassionally a
complete failure - and it doesn't seem to be associated with the presence
or absence of a free roaming queen.  Logically, a queenless colony would
seem to be more receptive of extra queens.  Practically, they sometimes
neglect them.  Similarly, you may expect the workers or queen in a
queen-right colony to attack the banked queens, but that seems to be rare -
if the queens are separated by some space.

3.  Queen cages and attendants

I am convinced that this makes a difference.  Get rid of the attendants -
if nothing else, they die in the cage and make a mess.

Use a cage with enough space for the queen to get away from the bees
outside the cage and use a fine grid screen (or plastic mesh) so the bees
can't chew on the queens.  Regardless of claims to the contrary, I'm still
getting damage to queens kept in some of the newer cages - the old wood
blocks, expecially the larger ones, with a wire screen always worked - no
queen damage.

4.  Position - I've had better luck building a rack and inserting the
queens down between two brood frames than placing the queens on an excluder
or double screen between two hive boxes.

5.  Eventually - the bank will deteriorate.  Normally, the outermost queens
in a row of banked queens will die first.  Loss of the banked queens is
rarely random, it starts from the end of the row or with the queen cages
nearest to the outside of the hive box.  This might be a consequence of our
weather - cold nights, warm days.  I suspect the attendants pull inward on
cold nights, leaving the outer queen cages with no bee cover.

6. Biggest mistake that I've made - set up some nuc boxes for trials at a
distant location.  Had to have a viable, laying queen in every box.  Soooo,
I decided to bank a spare queen in each nuc.  That is, each nuc had a free
ranging, laying queen, and a banked queen.

Well, the bees killed the second queen in every nuc - but not the caged
queen!  They killed their own queen.  Apparently, they went with one queen
per box - couldn't get to the caged queen, so they balled the one they
could get at.

Jerry



Jerry J. Bromenshenk
Research Professor
The University of Montana-Missoula
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406-243-5648
406-243-4184
http://www.umt.edu/biology/bees