Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: kdm on September 03, 2012, 10:53:44 am
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I bought 11 queens that arrived next day air. The weather was very hot so i banked the queens between two frames of unsealed brood with the old queen below a excluder in the bottom story. This way i could deal with splits in the cool parts of the morning and evening. Made 5 splits the next day with everything going ok. The next morning i made two splits and went to the bank to get queens and 4 cages had the corks chewed out and the queens killed. I called the queen breeder and told them what happened and they are replacing my loss. What great service this is. Has anyone else had this problem.
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Of course bees will chew through cork if determined. Especially if the cork is turned sideways allowing the bees to see or "scent" to the queen through the small openings that this provides. With wooden three hole cages you have potential problems with two ends. With plastic cages you have one side to protect.
That is why you either use plastic queen cage holders such as the jzbz system, or you slide the queen cages up against the side of the hive.
You have a very generous queen provider. He not only got you healthy queens delivered, (which is what is required), but also assumed responsibility for queens being caged and any resulting queen deaths. I would not of replaced queens killed after banking them. That does not come with the price I charge for queens. ;)
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I agree completely with very generous. I offered to pay. The instructions said to bank them if i couldn't place them right away. I have not had problems in the past with cork, but i haven't made many queen banks.