Mike said:
I've stored many queens over an excluder, and seen unused queens remain
alive for months, after the attendants had been long dead.

I guess I will be the only person to object to queen banks. I strongly
believe a queen cage should only be a method of transporting a queen from
the queen breeder to the beekeeper or  used in itroduction.

Example of how picky myself  and my partner are:

We want our queen orders shipped if possible the day the queens are caged.
Regardless of the prearranged shipping date if the  queen breeder has
allready filled my order then ship my order.
we get upset when the express mail takes longer than two days. This year
most queen shipments out of California & Hawaii have taken four days. We get
free shipping if the express mail is over two days. We would rather pay the
shipping and get our queens in two days.

Our standard rule is a battery box (box holding 100 queens) are   installed
in hives/nucs within two days. If not we call another beekeeper and sell
what we can't install . Almost every year I sell part of a battery box  if I
can't use within two days and I also will buy part of a battery box from
another beekeeper so we do not have to bank queens.

Both my partner and I will install a caged queen in a small nuc so she can
start laying and come back in a couple  weeks and recage her if I know I /we
will need queens before another shipment arrives. These recaged queens are
quickly accepted by the bees.

Dr. Hoffman has shown that pheromone levels drop to low levels with a queen
which has been caged for awhile  which causes  in her opinion introduction
problems.

The number one reason I see for queens being banked is by beekeepers which
order more queens than brood they have got to make up nucs. I say find a
home for  (sell to another beekeeper) or as Chuck suggests change the
delivery date or try to set up the practice of installing or putting  queens
in small nucs instead of banking queens for weeks.

I do not know what the problem is this year with express mail but the
delivery time is double last year. I know many beekeepers are thrilled with
getting queen shipping for free but consider if not profitable we may lose a
valuable method of getting queens if express mail decides handling queens is
a losing proposition.

I agree  with the methods posted on queen banking by Simon , Sarah ,Chuck,
Mike and others but I see queens which have been in the cage for weeks as
*in my opinion* less than desirable. I see queen banking as an option but
*in my opinion*the last option.

Sincerely,
Bob Harrison

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