# Banking year oldqueens



## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Anyone here had any experience in banking year old mated queens? Just getting done with our first try at it and we weren't very successful. Have always used the upper chamber of a large, excluded, well fed double but our losses have approached 50% with almost identical results in each of 5 different hives used. My theory is that the reduced pheromone in the older queens may result in less interest by nurse bees. Anyone else have any thoughts or suggestions?


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## Kingfisher Apiaries (Jan 16, 2010)

Jim, i have learned most of what i know about queens from you, but let me take a shot at it. Y'all were banking WAY to many in each hive. A full bar is way to many! Plus, I would have done some type of a queen less bank. Yes I know y'all like the CB and all but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. 
Also, between you and jeff there has to be a way that y'all could come up with to catch WITH ATTENDANTS and into a day or 2 down the road.
I got about a 50% success on introing, getting them to lay, and keeping them from swarming. The ones that swarmed I combined with a queen right one to make some all brood singles, stacked a super on em and they are blowing out the walls. Oh did I mention swarming? If the nuc box got a tad to full they swarmed...like 2-3+ swarmed in the same week. Hopefully they are out in some tree or trash heap throwing drones!!! Man i wish I had a BUNCH of swarm traps out LOL.....
Let me say this though. The ones that I did keep going are GOLDEN! One a CB, about 5-6 are down south making honey, and some were used in a neighbors nucs.
Hope this is of any help.....
mike


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Jim,
Why are you doing this? To have a break in brood rearing? Maybe you should have banked each queen on her own hive?

Kingfisher,
Many queens have been successfully banked above cols w/out mortality such as what Jim is reporting. But they were not one year old queens they were new queens. At least when I did it they were.


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## Kingfisher Apiaries (Jan 16, 2010)

When i was working with jim, we were dequeening ALL hives that were coming out of almonds and the ones that were over wintered here and splitting them up into singles. When i say dequeening I mean the hive tool method, me or jim caging queens for use later on, or leaving the queen if we could not find her. He was caging the queens for use in the no takes using cells. A really good idea IMHO. 
I know that Mark, but 1 y/o queens are a totally different ball game!!!
mike


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

That they are Mike. But, I wonder what the difference is? Is the Queen's pheromone level higher? Is it that the colony gets confused and does what it can to eliminate queens?

Jim, how are you banking them? In wooden cages above an excluder? Or what?


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

We have banked newly mated queens many times in the same type setup with very few losses. The number of queens being banked isn't the issues we would have the same results regardless of the number being banked. Mark: We normally kill all our year old queens but decided this year to bank our best and use them in late check backs when we were concerned there might notbeenough time for cells to mate before being moved North.
They are caged in plastic (on cell holder racks) above an excluder.
Mike: Long term banking with attendants in the cage is not a good idea


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## Kingfisher Apiaries (Jan 16, 2010)

I meant the only bees they had contact with were the attendants...NEVER bank queens with attendants...big NONO. 

The point i am trying to make is that it may not be to many using young queens, but with mated queens I feel like it might be different. 
Some if it could have been how they were treated when they were caged....were we not gentle enough? 
Since 50% died, did you try using half as many in the same setup? 
Mike


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

No Mike the losses are ongoing. Not handling as we have caged many newly mated queens using the same handling methods


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

How about trying some of the queen mandibular pheromone (Bee Boost from mann lake) to artifcally boost the attractiveness of the banked queens?


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

Jim, you guessed pretty darn close... the older queens have developed a more distinct pheromone scent... thus they do not blend... remember, bees can't tell one queen from another, aside from the maturity level... so what's happening is they are picking up multiple "invasive" queens, as if swarms are trying to enter their hives with the queens unlike drift...

The other issue may be the cages in the bank... jzbz changed the cages from what we all were used to... the new ones have bigger holes (entrance and sides)... 

Try an inner cover with a four or five inch circular screen in the middle over the excluder for 24 hrs, then add the banks to the trapped bees above, wait 24 more hrs then you should be able to pull the inner cover...

But the best thing to do is just shake your nurse bees and cage them overnight (5#)... set up a single with mostly pollen and honey frames (leave space for upto four bank frames)... then add the bees in the am and banks in the pm... no brood... six days out add a frame of capped brood and continue adding one every 7 days if you have to... just exchange the hatched brood frame each time.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Thanks for the reply RR. Yeah in hindsight a queen less bank might have been the way to go. A little puzzled about your statement that they have a unique pheromone, my belief has always been that they have a weaker pheromone as they age (possibly both?) and this accounts for their occasional tolerance of another older queen in the same hive. In any case thanks for the reply and the good suggestions. At least I have some new material for another chapter in my increasingly lengthy book entitled: Things In Beekeeping Not To Do
Thanks also AB for the suggestion, might be worth a try as well.


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

You have the right idea... the pheromone base is weaker in more mature queens limiting the perception to laying, laying well, or not laying at all.. this is how the bees identify the stages of the queens performance and needs within the colony eg..swarm time, supercede time, etc.. the more she lays at once the more brood pheromone is present and thus the less her pheromone is necessary, so they make decisions during times of heavy capped brood or lower levels of brood because this is when they can more accurately identify her pheromone... in cases where two or more queens are excepted there is either an over abundance of brood pheromone or an equal dilution of qmp. Make sense?


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

I've noticed when setting up queen banks, adding a queen who was just laying often sets off the bees dispatching the older queens that have not been laying. So I always set one up and add all the queens the same day and don't add more until it's empty of queens.

I would think it's similar. I have not tried banking them in a hive that has a queen at the time. I take a few frames of brood from different hives and a few frames of honey from different hives and shake in a few extra bees and then add the queens in cages. They generally raise a new queen but that doesn't seem to hurt anything. They are queenless when I put the cages in.


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

Michael Bush said:


> I've noticed when setting up queen banks, adding a queen who was just laying often sets off the bees dispatching the older queens that have not been laying.


I agree. More evidence that they can distinguish between queens by the pheromones being altered by the amount of laying and when..."maturity" levels (so to speak) of the queens... leading to the thought that maturity in queens is not simply a matter of age, but a matter of stamina and situation...


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## frazzledfozzle (May 26, 2010)

when we are banking older queens we always remove the original queen from the bottom box and when we put the banked queens in we put one down below to be realeased at the same time as the others to be banked go in the top.
That way there is no original queen scent and all the queens will be looked after.

Also you can never add to your bank once you have the queens in because any queens added later will usually be killed or not fed.

We have a very good success rate banking this way.

frazz


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>when we are banking older queens we always remove...

That would make sense. It is a similar result to them raising their own in the sense that at the time you add them they are all equal and everything else changes gradually as the new queen starts laying. I might try that. 

Actually thinking back I had a cage fall once and it had candy in it and they released her and she started laying and the others were fine. I thought I just got lucky, and never thought of trying it on purpose.


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## frazzledfozzle (May 26, 2010)

By taking the original queen out of the hive it's essentially making the hive queenless meaning the bees will be willing to accept a new queen.

When you introduce your queens for banking all at the same time the bees don't seem to differentiate between having one queen or 20 they accept them all.

By putting one of your queens to be banked in the bottom box for release you dont have the hassle of introducing more brood into the hive all the time or looking for those rogue queencells after brood intoduction.

It seems that it's not the presence of a laying queen that causes the problem it's the presence of the original queen.

I quess it's similar when you introduce a caged queen to a queenright hive, it's usually killed.

frazz


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Thanks all, good discussion definitely learned something. Another clue that I didnt mention and should have picked up on is that quite often those caged queens spent their first night in a battery box with a minimal number of nurse bees and we rarely lost any until they were put into our booming nursery hives a day later. I guess it makes a little more sense now, just got thrown off by the fact that we couldnt apply the same techniques that we have successfully used in the past to hold newly mated queens. Lesson learned, the good news is our queen "catch" was high enough this year that we didnt need to reuse too many old queens.


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## SERGE (Sep 14, 2010)

Michael, when you bank your queens for winter specifically, do you think it's a good idea or not to add a free queen at the same time as per discussion on this thread?
Also, with winter banking, obviously there is no need to add fresh brood as per warmer months banking standards, right? 
Thanks
-Serge


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

Serge, banking queens over an entire winter is quite a difficult venture that not many people can pull off. Reg does it by keeping a number of queenless, bloodless hives (basically 5# packages on combs) indoors during the winter with a temperature controlled atmosphere and tiny tube entrances in order to keep them from ever clustering... he feeds these pollen and syrup all winter and sacrifices other hives I'm order to supply them with fresh bees every so often... he banks around 3,000 queens each winter in order to have those available earlier in spring to go with packages and those extra early orders for almond splits.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Michael, when you bank your queens for winter specifically, do you think it's a good idea or not to add a free queen at the same time as per discussion on this thread?

I've only had it happen once by accident and it seem to turn out ok. But that's not a large enough sample for me to draw any specific conclusions, but it would be a worthwhile experiment.

>Also, with winter banking, obviously there is no need to add fresh brood as per warmer months banking standards, right? 

There will be no brood to add most of the winter, but if you had some I suppose you could. Mostly you need to add some bees somewhere in the middle of winter, as Mr. Russel says, you need to be prepared to sacrifice a nuc or two to keep it going.


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## SERGE (Sep 14, 2010)

Thanks so much for the feedback RR and MB.
-Serge


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