I am about thru offering advice. A friend with little beekeeping experience and big dreams picked up some queens from a commercial operator and was prevented from immediately using them by cold wet weather settling in. To temporarily bank these queens with no cage attendants or candy, I told him to put a queen excluder on a strong colony and put the queen cages on top of the excluder. This is what he did. But the next morning I was shown this 'queen bank'. The ten queens were lined up in a row against the outside wall of a feeder rim screen up without a bee feeding or protecting them in sight.
What I meant and do myself is put them screen down in the center of the colony where the bees are thickest. That placement allows them to beg food and get heated from below. No decernable damage done but I doubt they would have long survived there. I moved them quickly to the middle because it was raining and quickly closed up.
Now my young friend knowing this is not how big time commercial keepers bank their queens got worried about my method and after I left, took a nuc box out with a prepare frame to hold the queen cages, pulled one good brood frame and placed the queen frame, the brood frame and a frame of honey in the nuc box and moved it into his garage.
I have questions about that arrangement but didn't voice them. Is he absolutely sure the queen did not come with that brood frame? Are there enough bees to protect the brood, let alone the queen frame. In short, I wonder if your best advice actually helps the new beekeeper. Couple that with the ten methodologies offered for any question asked on this forum, how do any of the novices make the leap to successful beekeeper. It is a cold gloomy weekend spitting rain and I have queens depreciating banked on top bars myself. As some ole greek said three thousand years ago, "What is Truth?"
What I meant and do myself is put them screen down in the center of the colony where the bees are thickest. That placement allows them to beg food and get heated from below. No decernable damage done but I doubt they would have long survived there. I moved them quickly to the middle because it was raining and quickly closed up.
Now my young friend knowing this is not how big time commercial keepers bank their queens got worried about my method and after I left, took a nuc box out with a prepare frame to hold the queen cages, pulled one good brood frame and placed the queen frame, the brood frame and a frame of honey in the nuc box and moved it into his garage.
I have questions about that arrangement but didn't voice them. Is he absolutely sure the queen did not come with that brood frame? Are there enough bees to protect the brood, let alone the queen frame. In short, I wonder if your best advice actually helps the new beekeeper. Couple that with the ten methodologies offered for any question asked on this forum, how do any of the novices make the leap to successful beekeeper. It is a cold gloomy weekend spitting rain and I have queens depreciating banked on top bars myself. As some ole greek said three thousand years ago, "What is Truth?"