# Keeping spare queens?



## chillardbee (May 26, 2005)

That is called banking queens. It's a good idea for when you need to buy time until you can use the queens but the sooner you can use the queen the better it will be. I myself wouldn't keep queens in bank for more than 2 months at the most. 
When I set up my bank I use a strong single and cage that queen too. I place an excluder over the single and place on a shallow super. 6 - 7 days after setting up the single, I go through it thoroghly and remove any queen cells should there be any. the excluder prevents rogue virgins (if any enter the hive) from getting to the queens. I use JZBZ cages with the battery box which sets on the excluder. the hive should have lots of honey and pollen, if not, the hive should be given some. I feed the hive periodicly too. A hive like this can bank around 200 queens.
These queens should be used ASAP because the best place for a queen is in the hive laying.


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## LT (Aug 17, 2006)

If you were going to bank queens for say 1 month or 11/2 months would you keep the queen in the bottom single caged that long? If so I guess that you would have to add brood frames from another hive every so often? Thanks


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## LT (Aug 17, 2006)

One more question. Do you put any candy in the JZBZ cage? I am assuming that no nurse bees go in the cage with the caged queens? Thanks again


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## chillardbee (May 26, 2005)

I have candy in the cages and the way they fit into those battery boxes prevents the bees from getting to the candy. I don't put nurse bees in with them. the bottom queen gets caged and put up into the bank as well. If you can, It would be better to let the bank set queenless for a day or 2 as well so that they will tolerate the queens when you put them on the bank.


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## bbbbeeman (Jan 13, 2007)

yes I keep spare queen and I get the queen cell from my best hives,I put queen excluderson top and bottom of the brood box,<medium>,as the brood fill up they build swarm cells,when the cell is capped it goes in to a nuc box<frame,with one honey,one drawn cone and 2 foundation.this gives you a good queen after she has mated,with the queen storage nuc you use her when you want to it helps keep queen on hand.I keep 7or8 on hand I go through my hives and use the swarm cells in those nucs,all in all I keep swarms down,go through my hives every 14 days,when all of my hives <40 to60> have 1or2 year old queen ,I sell the excess, it works for me.good luck rock.
p.s.I put the nuc bees and brood back in my weekest hives this late inthe season


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

I sometimes bank some on a weekend so I can ship them out the following week and not have to find queens during the week when I have less time, and I have banked them for several months and reintroduced them to experiment with banking and found they started laying quite quickly. Which makes me wonder about the queens I've bought that took two weeks to start laying. But most of my queens I keep in nucs. You just have to steal some frames from them or move them to bigger boxes as they fill out the small ones... but they are easier to introduce when they are laying queens instead of banked queens and the nucs may build up into hives, which I don't find a bad thing.


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## WI-beek (Jul 14, 2009)

Thanks guys. 

I dont want to bank queens in cages. I dont know why but most of the queens I got that were banked were superseded. I dont think anything was wrong with them but my bees did not care for them. I got three batches of them. Most made queen cells in them a couple weeks later which I scraped out and then again more cells so I just let them do there thing. Other than that I have had great acceptance just poor long distance acceptance. Not sure what to really make of it. I also orderd some queen back in January for mite resistance and I did not get them till last week of july. I should have feed the nucs I made with them right away but I did not so I have been feeding desperately for the past month and a half trying to build them up for winter. With all the swarm cells I found this year in colonies gone bonkers that I could have used in June or early July to make increase, I see no reason not to keep them for increase or spares instead of buying them. Plus I could not get local queens late this season.


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## Grant (Jun 12, 2004)

I don't bank queens either. 

I make up 5-frame nucs for mating. I'll expand as the nuc grows into a single, 10-frame brood box. It's easier to requeen from a nuc with a laying queen so that single will go on top of the weakened colony, or I may just shake the weakened colony (minus the old queen) into this single. Then I'll add another brood box, if needed.

Grant
Jackson, MO


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## WI-beek (Jul 14, 2009)

Grant

How many frames of bees do you put in these nucs? I had a colony that I thought was toast in early summer. It literally was down to a couple hundred bees. I was going to shake it out and take equipment but I was in a hurry and planed to do it later. When I got around to it, they against all odds were raising a small patch of brood so I just left it out of curiosity. It supercieded twice to my knowledge after this and built up over a full deep to date and is looking very nice. I still cant believe they made it. 

So if your only goal is to provide a place for queen to mate and lay until you need her, a frame of bees with some brood and honey should be sufficient, right. This would also prevent here from burning herself out right?

Thanks


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

I'm not Grant, but of course you put as many frames as it's made to hold. I have nucs made for two, three, four, five, eight and ten frames (I would consider a ten frame medium a nuc...)

http://bushfarms.com/images/AssortedWidths.JPG
http://bushfarms.com/images/TwoByFourMatingNucs.JPG
http://bushfarms.com/beesnucs.htm#varioussizes


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## mythomane (Feb 18, 2009)

You can use one frame, but they will be weak. I have decent luck with 3 framers for keeping queens. Reminds me, I have to do some combining this week....


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## LT (Aug 17, 2006)

During the heat of the queen rearing season I find sometimes it is hard to keep check on the banking nucs and they swarm. Still looking for an easy way to keep caged queens banked. Thanks


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