# Queen Bank for 12



## McBee7 (Dec 25, 2013)

I would like to order a dozen queens to be used over the next month and wondered if there is a good way to do this, or if I should just order the queens I need, and use them right away.....It's too early to raise queens here, but I'd like to start a few early nucs, and avoid the postage fees by ordeering what I need for the next month....
I know commercial beeks use a queen bank hive, and can keep 50/100 in that designated hive, can I just make a frame to hold the queen cages and stick them into a plain-O-hive or what???
Thanks for your advice,thoughts, or suggestions 

==McBee7==


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

If you make sure your queens come in JZs BZs cages standing in an orange plastic tray, you can set them on a queen excluder above a hive and inside an empty super and the bees in the hive will come up and feed those queens. That has been a good way for me to bank queens. That's how I prefer to do it.

But if you get queens in three hole wooden cages, you can lay them on an excluder in a similar fashion, but you'd want to remove the attendants. To do that, remove the cork from the end without the candy and carefully allow the attendants to exit the cage. If they don't do so fast enough for you, or if there are any dead bees in the cage, take a paper clip, straighten it out except the smallest loop, and use that as a hook to pull them out. Being sure not to injure the queen.

Try it.


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## Kungfuroo (Feb 11, 2015)

Why would the type of queen cage make a difference?

Can you just add queen cages above the excluder without the bees harming the queens? I'm assuming the colony is queen right hence the queen excluder that you need to put it.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Kungfuroo, The plastic cages stand up like bullets in a tray and bees can get all around them and can feed queens through the slits in the cages. You can do that with wooden cages too, I guess. But the plastic cages are sent through the mail that way. With attendants in the box, but not in the cage.

It doesn't really matter that much. Whatever works. Just saying how I like to do it.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Welcome to Bee Source, Kungfuroo!


Maybe I am wrong but in a queen right hive that the bees will not
feed the foreign queens. Am I correct? But in a queen less hive they will.
As many mated queens as I put in the hive they will just ignored the queens and they died as
a result of starvation. Also the balling too. Either way none of the queens survived. Maybe your
bees are a bit different than mine. I should say they are more gentle than mine and will feed all type of queens.
I will test this out above the excluder the next time there is a chance to.


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## McBee7 (Dec 25, 2013)

Welcome to BS Kungfuroo--
And thanks for the input, there are tons of great peeps here with years and years of experience and folks like me with some experence and mainly just looking to learn and enjoy the hobby 
Thanks Mark for the great advice. I'm not sure what type of cage the queens will come in but I have a sample of both here and I think I'll try to make a holder for each just in case.....Maybe I'll use a 1by2 with holes drilled in it to hold the necks of the JZBZ cages in an upright position and also make one with a dado cut in it to hold the 3 hole cage in an upright position with the screen facing out....And yes I'll use a queen right hive....I also wondered how long a setup like this will keep the queens....

==McBee7==

PS, I took my truck out of 4wheel drive last week and most of the trucks around here have replaced the snowmobiles with 4wheelers in the back,,,LOL...Thats how the natives around here know its spring


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

You should be able to bank them for a month. I don't keep mine that long though. Maybe a queenless hive would work better. A guy I know who raises queens banks them in the JZCs BZs cages on bars down inside his hives, between the frames. Pretty sure those hives are queenless.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

I do mine like Mark, sqkcrk, suggests. I try to get them into their new homes within a week or ten days. But last season I had some that were banked that way for over 45 days and they were largely accepted. I don't recommend going any longer than necessary though.


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## snapper1d (Apr 8, 2011)

I think the biggest concern is do you bank them in queen less hives or in queen right hives.That would be my question also.In all my years I have always had a place for them but the hive I was wanting to get queens off of I opened yesterday and it was full of swarm cells and bees.I wasnt ready for this so I am wanting to save all these.I will be cutting them all out when they are ripe and place in nucs but I will have to remove the original queens and bank them till I can get places for them all.So which is it Bank in queen less or queen right hive?


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## MTN-Bees (Jan 27, 2014)

I've used and will be using in 3 weeks a queenless five frame Nuc with a feeder. I use it to buy a couple of days when splitting hives. I've been considering placing the nuc on top of a double screen then on to of a strong hive for warmth as it can be cold here.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

This is just my queen raising experience over the past 4 short
years of bkeeping. If you put a caged laying queen into
another queen right hive, the workers will not feed this
caged queen. No matter how many queens you bank in they
will just ignored them because they already have a laying queen.
So this will tell me to bank them in a queen less hive is better.

Your virgin queens that just hatched is another story because they
don't have the strong queen scent yet. In a queen right hive they will definitely be ignored for sure. Besides you cannot bank the virgins for long because they need to roam the hive to exercise and strengthen their muscles to prepare for the mating flight. Whether or not they are in a queen right or less hive don't bank them for too long. As soon as you can nuc them do it right away. The weather doesn't matter because they cannot take the mating flight either. Do as you wish and update us on your experience. It was mentioned here also so I did my Little Bee Experiments to confirmed their claim. It was true!


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## hpm08161947 (May 16, 2009)

beepro said:


> This is just my queen raising experience over the past 4 short
> years of bkeeping. If you put a caged laying queen into
> another queen right hive, the workers will not feed this
> caged queen. No matter how many queens you bank in they
> ...


That's odd... I bank mine on top of queen right hives and have had no problems. Sometimes keeping them there as long as 1 month. I do spray them with sugar water occasionally.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

I'm with Herb on this. Let's not rewrite the rules of queen banking.


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## snl (Nov 20, 2009)

sqkcrk said:


> A guy I know who raises queens banks them in the JZCs BZs cages on bars down inside his hives, between the frames. Pretty sure those hives are queenless.


No Mark, it is a q-right hive.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Maybe my way of banking them is different from yours, Herb.
Maybe I just bank them in the wrong time of the year or got the more aggressive bees to
work with. This is another My Little Bee Experiment I want to try again to confirm. I had killed too many queens already.

Perhaps, McBee7 can split the 12 queens into 2 set of 6 to bank them in a queen less and another in the queen right
hive for this experiment. 
If all survived then either a qr or ql hive does not matter. But if one side died more than the other then we know the
real result from this little queen experiment. Would you like to try it this way, McBee7 and report back your findings this season?


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

snl said:


> No Mark, it is a q-right hive.



Snl, is Mark referring to you or someone else that you know of?


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## BeeGhost (May 7, 2011)

From what I have heard/read..........if you bank in a queenrite hive, a few brood frames should be placed above an excluder in the second deep and then a queen bank frame in between them, this will draw nurse bees up which will not hesitate to take care of the queens.

I have placed a single caged queen in a queenrite hive and she was completely ignored and starved in her cage.......

I still have yet to bank any queens, but will give it a try this year as well.


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## hpm08161947 (May 16, 2009)

BeeGhost said:


> From what I have heard/read..........if you bank in a queenrite hive, a few brood frames should be placed above an excluder in the second deep and then a queen bank frame in between them, this will draw nurse bees up which will not hesitate to take care of the queens.
> .


That pretty well describes the way I do it. And it works for me.


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## McBee7 (Dec 25, 2013)

Thanks all for your point of views, and I was a little confused untill I read BG's reasoning about putting frames of brood above the excluder to draw up the nurse bees who will take care of whatever needs taken care of,,,LOL....So thats my choice at this point--Q rite hive with excluder with the queenbank flanked by brood frames,,,,thanks all 

==McBee7==


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

It's been a few years since I have banked many queens but we rarely lost any queens by placing them between frames of brood above an excluder in a strong well fed, queenright hive. I suppose it would also work well in a queenless hive but would require regular "reinforcements" to be added if they were going to be kept for very long. Oddly enough, one year we decided to bank a bunch of one year old queens in the same manner and had a heck of a time keeping them alive. I theorized that year old queens had lost enough pheromone so that they were less attractive to nurse bees.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Not that photos are needed....but my last batch of this spring's queens arrived yesterday...so I took a couple of pics.


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## McBee7 (Dec 25, 2013)

Thanks BeeManDan for the great pics. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words......I hadn't seen the racks that hold the JZBZ before , thanks again.

==McBee7==


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

I definitely prefer the JZBZ configuration.


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## BadBeeKeeper (Jan 24, 2015)

jim lyon said:


> I suppose it would also work well in a queenless hive but would require regular "reinforcements" to be added if they were going to be kept for very long. Oddly enough, one year we decided to bank a bunch of one year old queens in the same manner and had a heck of a time keeping them alive. I theorized that year old queens had lost enough pheromone so that they were less attractive to nurse bees.


Last year I banked a number of queens in a queenless hive for a couple three months. I kind of forgot about it after I used most of the queens and naturally it dwindled. I think it was some time in Sept when I remembered and opened it up- it was a pitiful sight, one leftover queen dead in the cage and about eight still alive workers trying to tend it.


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## Adrian Quiney WI (Sep 14, 2007)

HI Earl, what did the queens arrive in? The JZBZ's trays or something else? Thanks for starting the thread, I have learned from this.


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## McBee7 (Dec 25, 2013)

I ordered queens from Ca. that shipped on tuesday and arrived on thursday. I was busy on friday and they spent friday in my book shelf....On saturday I put them over a 2 deep Queen Rite nuc over a Q excluder with 2 frames of brood.... Here are a couple of pics of the shipper the 12 queens came in..



The queens only took half of the shipper and were in what I think are california cages, which stood upright and back to back and taped to a cardboard tray that was placed where you see the glasses case in the pic...attendant bees were not in with the queens but did there job frome the outside of the cages and got sugar syrup from a pad that was in the bottom of the shipper...I went out on sunday after church just to check them quickly to see if there were bees above the excluder and I couldn't lift the top off because the bees had propalized the cover already so that was good enough proof that bees had moved upstairs....I wish I had taken pics of the hive but forgot 
Anyway thanks again Adrian and everyone for the advise, I'll try to update later on their condition...

==McBee7==


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