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another bank queen question

2K views 4 replies 3 participants last post by  Michael Bush 
#1 ·
I have 2 queens left that I received last Thursday, overnighted to me. I started with 10, and until an hour ago I kept them in my laundry room and have watered twice a day while slowly installing. Of the 2 remaining, only one attendant per cage has died.

We are having storms move through and am not going to requeen today.

I don't have a bank frame, so what I did was on a newer nuk (queen emerged on 4/15 and is doing great, I checked today, and saw her! with open brood).

I put an excluder on top of the box and put the 2 caged queens, with their attendants, screen side down on top of excluder. Then I put an empty shallow box over that and lid. No frames in shallow. I have some empty drawn frames I could put in. Temps tonight should not be lower than mid 60's and it's mid 80's now.

Any problem with this set up? I did screen side down to keep temp more regulated.
Thank you.
 
#2 ·
It should work - a bank without the frame. You could put one less frame than the shallow box fits in the upper box so there's room for the "bank mates". That should prevent illicit comb building, and allow the night time cluster to more easily cover the banked queens, but if they are only in there a day or two and it's warm at night, you don't really need to.

The idea of a queen bank is lots of queenless, well-fed nurse bees with nothing to do but take care of (preferably mated) queens, and NOT long-term care! A Cloake board works great for this! See Dr. Susan W. Cobey's website, www.honeybee.breeding.com , look for The Cloake Board Method Queen Rearing and Queen Banking. I'd print that article - it's a good one!

For introducing them, make some Laidlaw queen introduction cages. Best queen introduction system out there! See Contemporary Queen Rearing by Dr. Harry H. Laidlaw.
 
#3 ·
If I were banking two queens, I'd just put them in a box with some air holes and put a couple of dozen workers in, and a sponge with some 1:2 (1 part sugar 2 parts water) in it for food. Or some candy on one end and a sponge with some water on the other end. You can replace the workers from time to time.

Of course if you only want to keep them a few days or a couple of weeks, I'd just add a drop of water to the screen once a day and keep them in a cool, (like between 60 and 80 F) dark, quiet place.
 
#4 ·
They can last 2 weeks in the original cage with daily watering and in the laundry room (dark&quiet)? Nice! I worried >80 degrees would be too cold.
Weather here and my work schedule just are not cooperating with getting requeening done. Again on Wednesday, cloudy then rain all afternoon and now I have a couple 12 hr shifts to work.
Thanks!
 
#5 ·
>They can last 2 weeks in the original cage with daily watering and in the laundry room (dark&quiet)?

You can't know how long the attendants were there before they shipped, but if they are young, it should last that long.

> Nice! I worried >80 degrees would be too cold.

Cool and dark seems to work fine (like 60 to 70 F) and as long as it's not more than 80 its still ok.
 
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