Banking Queens (1st time doing it, need advice)

[fatscher]

I'm about to try to bank three queens I just got from Koehnen Apiaries today.

I have a two deep hive. I plan to exclude the banking hive queen from the upper deep body I plan to bank the queens in. I plan to put the queen cages for banking in modified frames without foundation, and place this banking frame between two frames of emerging brood and nurse bees. Then I plan to feed fumagillin-laced sugar syrup to hold nosema at bay in the gut of my banked queens.

This is what Larry Connor describes in his book, "Bee Sex Essentials"

Is there anything I'm missing? Should I remove all attendant bees from cages? Appreciate your help!

[BEES4U]

FYI: I did this for you.

Go to the grey menue bar, click on Search, and type in queen banking.

This is what you should get from your search.

http://www.beesource.com/forums/search.php?searchid=894989


Regards & enjoy the forum!
Ernie Lucas Apiaries

[Eaglerock]

FYI:

http://www.beesource.com/forums/search.php?searchid=894989



It didn't work...

[RayMarler]

Yes, most definately remove the attendant bees. Make sure there is open nectar frames and frames of pollen up in the top queen banking box. Everything else sounds good to me.

[BEES4U]

1. Click on the word search between New posts and quick Links, type in Banking queens and then hit your keyboard enter.
Ernie

[Michael Bush]

One way is to take a small bee tight box (an old cigar box with a piece cut out and screened over, or just pock a bunch of holes in it for air, or one of the JZBZ battery cages), put in some candy (just sugar and water heated in the microave and adding sugar until it's like dough) and shake in a few bees from open brood from three different hives. Then add the queens in the cages. You should only have a hundred or so bees in the box. Put a few drops of water on the screen or the lid of the battery box. This works for a week or two. If you add more bees it can work for longer.

[fatscher]

On Aug 23rd I banked three Koehnen Cordovan Italian queens. BTW, Koehnen delivered them to me unmarked (I didn't tell them to mark them), so I marked the queens. I removed the 6 or 7 attendant bees that Koehnen had placed inside each queen cage for shipping.

I made my bank by using two deep nuc bodies stacked on top of each other. In the bottom nuc is a laying queen, roaming freely. The top box sits over an excluder which keeps the laying queen out of the upper body. The upper body holds 2 frames of mostly capped brood, but there's some open cells of larvae, 1 frame of honey and pollen and a 4th frame modified to hold the queen cages. I had a 5th frame in there but the frame holding the queen cages seems to press against the combs of capped brood which I found very undesirable, so I took it out. On top of the upper [queen bank] body (now holding 4 frames), I have a nuc-sized inner cover with two banty chicken waterers with sugar syrup sitting on top of that. Then I have a 3rd empty nuc deep body to protect the sugar waterers, with a migratory cover on top of that.

On August 28th I checked the hive (this is 5 days later). All three queens were alive. I fed fumagillin medicated sugar syrup, as I had when I first hived these queens. Larry Connor's book, Bee Sex "Essentials" talks about the risk of Nosema building up in a banked queen's midgut, thus I medicated with Fumagillin.

On Sept 1, I checked the queen bank again, and one of the three queens had died, so now I'm down to 2 Italian Cordovans. There goes $22 bucks, ouch. I fed more medicated syrup.

I sort of panicked when I couldn't find my laying queen down below the excluder. I feared that my banks had distracted the colony from the laying queen and she had been killed. Further, there were a couple supercedure cell cups on the sides of some of the frames of comb.

Now tonight, in prep for Tropical Storm Hanna, I decided to check that queen bank one more time. Two queens were found alive, YAY! The banking is WORKING!!!!. I also found my laying queen below the excluder, I was so thrilled.

I took a frame of newly emerged bees, nurse bees and shook them into the upper deep (bank), I took a frame of open brood from below the excluder and replaced one of my frames of empty comb up top with that.

So all is well. Now let's hope the @#$% hurricane doesn't do much damage.