# How long can a queen remain in her shipping cage



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

As long as the attendants are healthy and you give them a drop of water every day she should keep for a week or more. When the attendants start dying you will have to do something quickly, especially if they are all dead.


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## Bee-wildered (Oct 18, 2004)

Thanks Michael.


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## naturebee (Dec 25, 2004)

No sense keeping the queen in limbo storage for one week when you can get a jump start on queen acceptance, and also assurance that she will be taken care of and fed properly.

Remove a frame of nurse bees with a small patch of young larva and check real good that the queen is not on the frame and make your self up a nuc to store the queen in. The next day, give one last check for the queen and place the queen cage next to the frame of bees and store her there. When time comes to introduce the queen, just slip the frame with queen cage attached right down into the hive and acceptance will be much faster.


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## tecumseh (Apr 26, 2005)

as mister bush has suggest the key is to make sure they have attendant bees and water and a bit of feed. I would suspect with a bit of care you should be able to maintain a queen in this manner for months rather than weeks (although most folks would have no reason to do this).


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

I suspect you could do it for months also, if the attendants last that long.


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## [email protected] (Aug 1, 2004)

A queen can be kept in a queen cage without harm for weeks or months. However, the attendents need to be changed every 14-20 days. 

Without attendents a good way to bank a queen is above a queen excluder on a strong hive. Put a frame of eggs and larvae there also. The nurse bees will come up through the excluder and care for the eggs and larvae as well as the queen. In fact, I have often kept 20-30 queens in this manner (in a single hive) for 1-2 weeks.


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

Lloyd: That way sounds pretty good. I try never to keep a queen more than 4 to 5 days. If they are in a battery box with a few attendiants, the workers will dye off quicker.. in my opinion.. versus if workers are caged with the queen.

Water is the key.


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## newbee 101 (May 26, 2004)

"I have often kept 20-30 queens in this manner (in a single hive) for 1-2 weeks "

Don't the queens try to kill each other?


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Don't the queens try to kill each other?

They are in cages.


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## naturebee (Dec 25, 2004)

Not sure here, but this tread might to have gotten off on a direction apart from the original intent.

Im sure the original poster would be happy to go for the world record for sustaining the last God given life sustaining breath of a queen confined in a cage a bit later in her beekeeping career.









I made some assumptions that maybe I shouldnt have made,,,
I assumed the poster was wishing to keep a queen healthy: when you consider that a "queen eats nothing but royal jelly for her entire life", where are these attendants going to get this royal jelly in a cage necessary for giving the BEST queen food possible? SURE, a mated queen can survive on feed that is added to the cage, but so could a pregnant woman survive on rice and water. 

I made another assumption that she had some concern about taking time to evaluate which of the colonies was queenless and introduce the queen:
Here making up a 4 frame nuc to put the queen into would get a jump on introduction and acceptance, laying and being fed a proper diet. Acceptance can be more easily checked in a nuc, she can then be released and get a jump start on laying. The queen can be kept healthy in a nuc indefinitely, then when ready, the nuc is simply slipped into the hive.


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## sc-bee (May 10, 2005)

Making splits with my mentor now. He was late getting queens and now the hives are booming with bees. We are having a difficult time finding queens and the weather also doesn't want to co-operate. His system is to split and mark splits with identifier if more than one split where you cannot find queen(ex a1-a1 and a2-a2). After three days he goes back to the splits and looks for eggs. Colony with new eggs has queen---matching numbered nuc does not. Often the queen can be found after the splits have settled down (less bees to look).
He keeps his extra queens on top of a strong hive in the boxes separated by two queen excluders.


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## Joel (Mar 3, 2005)

The effort to make up a 4 frame nuc to keep 1 queen 4 days seems very labor intensive. 4 days in a queen cage with attendants as long as the queen is kept warm is fine. In the spring we order 300-400 queens in battery boxes to arrive within a 2 wk period. Due to weather and yard work considerations we keep queens (often 50 or 60) in battery boxes for weeks at a time in the spring refeshing the nurse bees, as Llyod does, every week or so and just feed honey. We don't use water unless it's needed to thin the honey or to cool bees if it gets too warm.

[ May 11, 2006, 07:41 AM: Message edited by: Joel ]


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## iddee (Jun 21, 2005)

Pcolar, do the attendants feed the queen the fondant, or do they eat it and produce royal jelly for the queen?


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>do the attendants feed the queen the fondant, or do they eat it and produce royal jelly for the queen?

The attendants would require pollen to produce royal jelly.


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## naturebee (Dec 25, 2004)

--The effort to make up a 4 frame nuc to keep 1 queen 4 days seems very labor intensive. 4 days in a queen cage with attendants as long as the queen is kept warm is fine.

I'm assuming that the poster has less than 300 colonies to requeen, maybe 1 colony.
Getting back to her original intent of the question, this would be the best way to keep the queen alive the longest, and making a nuc or banking a queen are good ways to do this. 

But I hearby make notice that I am defecting and going with SC-Bees advice.








I think the best advice on the thread was from SC-Bee to slip a queen excluder in-between the colony then look for eggs 3 days later to find which half the queen is in.

That the discussion got off on how long you can keep a queen alive really doesnt solve her problem as well as Sc-bees advice does.

[ May 11, 2006, 05:58 PM: Message edited by: Pcolar ]


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

I have 22 queens that I have had since April 21st. I got them from a friend who got them from AL a coupole of days earlier.

When I got my 100 Jon and Mike and I went through them and removed the dead attendants. Then I gave the queens a drop of water each morning and evening until I used them.

I'm down to 22 now. This morning I cleared out the dead attendants and put new ones in so that there are 4 or 6 per cage.

I'm hoping that they will still be good when the bees come back from the orchards in a week or two.


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## mwjohnson (Nov 19, 2004)

Hi Bee-wildered,
I was turned on to this by Mt.Camp last year,so thank him when you see him.
Make up your split(you MIGHT even see the queen,if you do,your good to go)and leave the parts overnight.
Then the next morning,take the caged queen,and hold it over the hole in your inner cover.The queenless part will go NUTS,the first bee to catch her scent will put her butt up and start fanning and then they all start fanning and just really acting nice,trying to feed her.
The queenright part,will pile on her,and they will be trying to bite her,and or trying to sting her.You will be able to hear their teeth gnashing against the wire mesh.You will need to brush them off,and they will be VERY heard to get loose
The difference is REALLY amazing,I thought it worked great.

Good Luck
Mark Johnson

P.S. AND you gotta chant "long live the queen" with them


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## Joel (Mar 3, 2005)

{I'm assuming that the poster has less than 300 colonies to requeen,}

Good point, sometimes I loose my perspective on the fun/experiance/enjoyment part of running a few hives.


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## ?honey? (May 14, 2003)

Thanks you all. This post aqnswers my post from this morning "TOO COLD"


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## Bee-wildered (Oct 18, 2004)

Thank you all for the incredible input given!

The hive I want to split is so incredibly populated that I couldn't find the queen. The reason I asked the original question was to be assurred that I COULD split and wait 4 days to see queen cells in the split without a queen. At that time I was going to remove the queen cells and introduce my new queen (that I already have).


Vickie


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## magnet-man (Jul 10, 2004)

I have a queen that has been in her shipping cage since last September. I havn't had any problems with her since October.


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## megank (Mar 28, 2006)

Well...this reminds me of a stry I'd like to share..

About ten years ago My brother ordered queens about the same time as the Unibomber sent his last bomb via postage...

The queens where shipped that same day and due to the size of the package it had to have been x-rayed. Anyawho..the shipment didn't arrive before he left on a two week vacation.

When he got back there was a message to pick up his queens and were in good shape 

Basically, the queens were untouched unfeed for 22 days according to the postmark date.

So...That gives you an idea of how hardy bees really are


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