# Queen castle



## lupester (Mar 12, 2008)

I use the ones bought from brushy mountain but you could make them easily. It is very nice to have extra queens on standby in case one of yours goes down or you do a cut out and kill the queen, or you want to requeen a hot swarm you catch. I will be moving them from 3 frame medium queen castles to 8 frame boxes to build up for the winter if I dont use them by the summer.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

I've made many. The simplest is to take a standard hive and cut 1/4" grooves for the dividers and cut the dividers out of 1/4" luan plywood.


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## BeeCurious (Aug 7, 2007)

Michael Bush said:


> I've made many. The simplest is to take a standard hive and cut 1/4" grooves for the dividers and cut the dividers out of 1/4" luan plywood.


MB,

Is there any use in using a double queen excluder (or double screen) as a bottom... And to what advantage?


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## stormbringer (Apr 15, 2010)

Thx guys,

I guess I'm calling it wrong.

What I had seen was basically a frame that sat in a queeright hive. It had a section with several queens caged in it.

While I like the queen castles, I see them as working hive that will eventual swarm and leave because I don't have the space to grow right now.

Or am I wrong?

Thanks again for everybody's help.


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## BillyH (Apr 19, 2010)

Build a queen castle Nuc plan. :lookout:

http://www.tc.umn.edu/~reute001/Plans.html


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## bfriendly (Jun 14, 2009)

You are thinking of -search on this forum for: "queen banking frame" "queen bank frame" Best if used in a queenless hive or nuc with lots of young bees, or emerging brood added periodically.

simplest probably to build a frame that holds CA (wood) mini cages, there is a picture of this on glenn apiaries web site

Also can be used above an excluder, but slightly trickier.

Be sure that if temps will drop at night, you have LOTS of bees in hive, otherwise they may cluster and abandon some of the queens to the outside edges.

when introducing banked queens, introduce them to a small nuc for best results.


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## stormbringer (Apr 15, 2010)

That's it. Thanks!

BTW BillyH, the site you gave me also had plans for one, but loos very convoluted...


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

A queen bank is useful. I usually set up a five frame medium nuc as a queen bank or an eight frame medium. Take a couple of frames of brood and a couple of frames of honey/pollen and one frame for the queen cages. I can bank a lot of queens in a queen bank. I bought some frames from someone (sorry, I don't remember off the top of my head) on here who has queen rearing equipment, including incubators, and it takes the JZBZ cages. It will hold a lot of queens. The main secret is it helps to have them queenless, and you should never add more queens later. Just set up a new queen bank, or remove all the ones in it and then add some new ones. Otherwise the new ones smell better (as they are in laying condition) and they will dispose of the old ones.


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## Specialkayme (Sep 4, 2005)

BillyH said:


> Build a queen castle Nuc plan. :lookout:
> 
> http://www.tc.umn.edu/~reute001/Plans.html


A bit behind, I know, but catching up on my reading 

That site had more plans than I knew existed. Some of that stuff I was just confused about what it was, and how to use it. Namely the queen hotel, and the swarm box. To be honest, I also don't really know how mating nucs work, or how to utilize them properly.

Does anyone know of a book or website that goes into depth about how to use some of that equipment?


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

A mating nuc is any hive - complete with workers, and comb - that you put either a ripe queen cell or a virgin queen into for the purpose of letting her fly out to mate from - and hopefully fly back. 

Some people use mating nucs that take full size frames, and others use tiny little ones that only need a cup full of bees to run. In some cases there will be multiple mating nucs made in one unit - called a "queen castle" - usually the entrances on castles are each on different sides of the unit to help the queens find their way back into the right individual mating nuc.

If you raise queens for sale as soon as your queens are mated you need to get them out of the mating nucs to make room for a new crop. And you need another place to keep mated queens once they are ready to sell (or whatever) until you are ready to send them out. So you can put them in individual little shipping cages and put a whole bunch of those in a "queen bank" hive so that the workers in the bank can feed the caged queens. The "queen hotel" on that page is a queen bank.

I'm sure the information about all that is in one place somewhere, but I don't know where that would be.


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## Specialkayme (Sep 4, 2005)

David LaFerney said:


> A mating nuc is any hive - complete with workers, and comb - that you put either a ripe queen cell or a virgin queen into for the purpose of letting her fly out to mate from - and hopefully fly back.
> 
> Some people use mating nucs that take full size frames, and others use tiny little ones that only need a cup full of bees to run. In some cases there will be multiple mating nucs made in one unit - called a "queen castle" - usually the entrances on castles are each on different sides of the unit to help the queens find their way back into the right individual mating nuc.
> 
> ...


Thanks David. So there wouldn't be any point in having a mating nuc unless you are raising alot of queens? Any idea what that swarm box is?


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

If you are producing any queens at all other than by making splits you need a mating nuc - and even when you make a split you are actually using the queenless half of the hive as a mating nuc. Of course you are also using it as the donor, cell starter, and finisher. It might produce a dozen or more queen cells, but only one queen if you are lucky. By separating those functions you can use the same resources to produce many queens instead of just one.

I think the kind of "swarm box" on that page is used to separate young nurse bees from older bees on the principle that the young bees tend to crawl into the dark hive and the field bees head into the light and want to fly home. The plans aren't real clear to me, so I'm not 100% sure.

You want cell starters and mating nucs to have lots of young nurse bees.


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## Lburou (May 13, 2012)

Most of that information is covered in books like _The hive and the Honey Bee_, or the books on queen rearing like Laidlaw's book _Contemporary Queen Rearing_. Most of that information is here on Beesource....._IF_ you can find it. 

Michael Bush's site has a lot of this information as well.


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## Adam Foster Collins (Nov 4, 2009)

Michael Bush said:


> ...I can bank a lot of queens in a queen bank. I bought some frames from someone ...and it takes the JZBZ cages. It will hold a lot of queens. ...


Any pictures of that one, Mike?

Adam


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Any pictures of that one, Mike?

http://www.honeyrunapiaries.com/sto...-p-246.html?osCsid=vqcnnibdu3j05k7lts0ui9vcs1

Not mine, but this is where I bought them...


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Michael Bush said:


> >Any pictures of that one, Mike?
> 
> http://www.honeyrunapiaries.com/sto...-p-246.html?osCsid=vqcnnibdu3j05k7lts0ui9vcs1
> 
> Not mine, but this is where I bought them...


It says "does not include queens" ya gotta love it.


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## Nolee (Jan 15, 2013)

Im thinking of making queen castles out of my full depth hive box. How can i cut 1/4" grooves for the 1/4" luan plywod dividers? what kind of tool can i use on an already assembled hive box? Any suggestions please?thanks very much.


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## BeeCurious (Aug 7, 2007)

Nolee said:


> Im thinking of making queen castles out of my full depth hive box. How can i cut 1/4" grooves for the 1/4" luan plywod dividers? what kind of tool can i use on an already assembled hive box? Any suggestions please?thanks very much.


I used 1/8" thick dividers (Masonite) and just used a power saw. Blocks of wood, and a strip of Masonite was used as spacers to run the saw against. Not using 1/4" would simplify the task.


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## Nolee (Jan 15, 2013)

BeeCurious said:


> I used 1/8" thick dividers (Masonite) and just used a power saw. Blocks of wood, and a strip of Masonite was used as spacers to run the saw against. Not using 1/4" would simplify the task.


Thanks BeeCurious for your reply. Do you use your powersaw in an assembled hive box? What sort of saw can I use to cut the grooves or can I just put the dividers without grooves as long as there are no big gaps between each "nuc"? Thanks again.


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## BeeCurious (Aug 7, 2007)

Nolee said:


> Do you use your powersaw in an assembled hive box? What sort of saw can I use to cut the grooves or can I just put the dividers without grooves as long as there are no big gaps between each "nuc"? Thanks again.


I recently made three Queen Tenements with used 8-frame medium boxes. The outside sections are two frames wide and the middle is three. It's best to cut the notch to the same depth as the frame rest. Otherwise, if you don't have a circular saw, just tack in some thin cleats to support the dividers and glue in the small pieces required to fill in the gaps at the top corners.


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## Solomon Parker (Dec 21, 2002)

Nolee said:


> Im thinking of making queen castles out of my full depth hive box. How can i cut 1/4" grooves for the 1/4" luan plywod dividers? what kind of tool can i use on an already assembled hive box? Any suggestions please?thanks very much.


I decided to build new ones, cut 1/4" slots with a dado blade. I have also retrofitted boxes in the past to split them in to nucs, but it required taking the box apart. Another downside with not starting from the beginning is lack of bee space at the top and bottom of the frames. To compensate, I cut the box taller and make a deeper frame rest. I'd recommend either starting from scratch or buying one. I have basic plans on my website: http://parkerfarms.biz/queens.html#Mating_Nucs You can adjust the height to suit. Made of 1x12 or 1x8 white wood (depending on box depth preference) with 5mm luan for dividers. I like it because it's just a bit thinner than 1/4" and so doesn't get jammed in there. 

Inner covers made of 1x6s, outer cover as usual. 

Bottom solid. 

Entrances are 1/2" by 3/8" slots at the bottom of the box (drains water) or 1/2" hole drilled at the corner. Whatever you do, make sure a frame can't get stuck against the entrance and close it off. 

I also drill a 1.5" hole on one end that is screened for ventilation and to confuse robbers. Has been 100% effective in keeping even the weakest nuc from being robbed out. 

These are an integral part of my operation and I cannot recommend them enough.


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## Nolee (Jan 15, 2013)

Thank you very much Beecurious and Solomon Parker for the reply. I 've found your blog very informative & helpful. Thanks heaps.


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