Awhile back there was a post to the effect that queens were lost during
banking.  I have always banked my queens after receiving them from the
breeder until I have a chance to install them.  This year I made careful
observations of what I did and what happened:

Immediately after receiving my 75 queens, I set them atop two of my
strongest hives, directly on the top bars of the upper hive body, and
covered them with a shallow tray (not a full super).  Within a day or
two all the attendant bees in the queen cages were dead, but all the
queens were alive and flourishing.  I took queens from this bank daily
as I anticipated using them to requeen and set up splits, and at the end
of the day returned any extras to the bank.  This occurred daily for
about ten days, when I installed the last of the queens.  Only one queen
died during this time, in spite of having no living attendants within
the cage.  Every time I came to get a few queen cages, they were covered
by hive bees caring for the queens - this in spite of the fact that the
hives were both normal queenright colonies.  The colony's queens never
were seen in the vicinity of the queen cages, and evidently paid no
attention to these visiting queens.

I haven't yet removed all the queen cages from the splits, but in the
six I got to, the queens all were normally released and laying after a
week.  A few dead attendants still remained in the cages.

Ted Fischer
Dexter, Michigan USA