Banking a queen for 4 months

[vmmartin]

A friend and I did a cutout on or around Dec. 4th 2010.  I caught the queen and placed her in a catcher.  My friend took the hive to his house and I told him to go in and release her in a couple of days.  Long story short, he did not.  I went by to check on hi hive since he was going to be out of town for a few weeks and I wanted to make sure that they were not needing another box.  Much to my surprise I saw the queen catcher towards the bottom of a frame and guess how was still in there? Yep, the queen was in there and seem eager to get out.  I let her go and was not sure if she would go back to laying. Well, I went and looked yesterday and she has filled every available space with brood.  It was a nice inadvertent experiment as to how long you can keep her caged.

[Kathyp]

wow.  4 months and the hive didn't fail?  that's pretty good.  must have been brood in the cutout comb?

[AllenF]

That is amazing.

[vmmartin]

Kathy, there was not much brood at all at the time of the cutout.  I am guessing since it was so late in the year that they were pretty much all winter bees and I think I read that they live longer since they work less.  I am interested in how they do over the next couple months. I am thinking about adding a couple of drawn frames that are empty so she can keep on laying instead of waiting for space to open up from newly emerging bees.

[bee-nuts]

I dont know about you but I think all faith in that friend would be lost if I were in your situation.

Did he tell you he released the queen or did the situation never come up?  How odd. 

I have done a little reading on banking queens and I sure would love to be able to bank queens over the winter for spring increase and not have to cross fingers that an order will be close to schedule.

What I really would like to know is if it would be possible to give each queen a small area of comb to actually lay in so she can keep her system running a bit.  If anyone has any literature to share on the subject Id love to know about it.  Being you can have a two queen hive with only a queen excluder in between them I see no reason why it could not be done.  You could keep the queen bank in temperature controlled box in the garage, shed or wherever.

[Michael Bush]

She would have not been laying all winter anyway.

[bee-nuts]

"She would have not been laying all winter anyway."

Did you see the location, average low in January is 60.?

[Kathyp]

that was my thought.  how much winter shut down is there in that area?  but point taken that they were probably winter bees.  i think that was a real piece of luck!

[AllenF]

Still amazing to think about.

[vmmartin]

Can't really say about winter slow down since this was my first year but I know that I had pretty good amounts of brood in February.

[Michael Bush]

Never been to Kountze, Texas.  Perhaps you're right.  I've seen them banked that long and they did fine.

[Dave360]

I am with kathy
Here in texas spring is almost over i had 2 hives queens didn't make it and they died out early spring (late Febuary)
but it is amazing to think about maybe a swarm left queen less recently ?
i had 2 hives that failed to requeen after swarms this year has been very windy and someone said hard for queens to mate when windy.

Dave

[JP]

Now I don't feel so bad about the queen I have banked in a set up at a friend's house from five days ago. :shock: Pretty sure she is mated though as it was a big swarm.


...JP