What is "Banking"?

[Chef Isaac]

what does "banking queens" mean?

[Jim Fischer]

See your other post "what to do".

This question is the answer to the "what to do"
question.

One could write a book onm the subject, so I'll
let someone suggest a decent book that covers it.
I can't think of one that does a very good job offhand.

[SippyBees]

As I wrote in the first post "what to do".... For most people I would not recommend banking... the % of queens you will be able to use varies often.... unless you have plenty of queens to waste/ lose.... It is just not a guaranteed way to save queens.... I would hate to see someone buy queens and bank them expecting they will all be OK and will just put them in a hive in a couple of days. Its just not that easy....
SippyBees

[Michael Bush]

It helps to set up the queen bank with a mixture of bees from four or five hives that are in a nuc and queenless for a while. Then put the queens in. In their cages still, of course.