Two years ago I had 30 queens shipped to do splits with.  They were shipped
in a bank with about a 1/2 pound of bees.  I could only do about 1/2 the
splits so I read somewhere that I could put them in a queenless nuk and the
nuk would take care of all queens.  So I took a queenless hive, put 2 frames
of honey and 2 frames with pollen and placed the whole bank with the
remaining queens in the center (still in their individual cages.

I would then take a queen out from time to time to make splits with or to
requeen a week hive with.  I used this nuk with the bees still in thier cages
for about 7 weeks until I had used all the queens.  The bees in the nuk took
great care of all the queens.  I also noticed very little problem in the
hives in which I put the queens as I used them.

I intend to continue to use this method to keep queens I want to have on hand
for requeening.   From time to time I lose a queen or need to replace a
failing queen.  It convenient to go to my queen  bank and remove a queen.  It
is also more cost effective for me to order more queens that can be shipped
in a bank and easier on the queens when they have more bees to attend to them
than when they are shipped in a cage with five or so attendant bees.

I have had experiences where the queens that were shipped to me have arrived
dead or near dead and the queen is so stressed that she has  become
ineffective.  Even though the breeders have always shipped replacements
immediately, the wait can be costly.

Ed