Banking a Queen

[Barnabus]

Hi:
As i read a post yesterday where they were talking about banking a Queen and how long could they do it. Can someone explain how this is done? I assume it is done because you are not ready to use her at that time if not please explain.

Thanks
Barnabus

[TREBOR]

Hi Barnabus,
 yep its done when you want to hold extra queens that you don't want to use yet, I'm no expert but if you take a frame without foundation
 and put a peice of wood about halfway , going hoizontal
 you put the queen cages between the top bar or the bottom bar and the
 new peice of wood.  there are many differant ways to bank queens
what i did was , I made sure that the queen was in the bottom brood box,
then I put the queen excluder on, then the top brood box , then I put the frame with the queens in the top box.
 you just have to make sure that the queen thats in the bottom can't get to the queens in the top box. or she will kill them!
  the workers will feed them.
I've had three banked for 2 1/2 weeks or more , just ckecked today .
  they are all in good shape! :D
 another way is to make a queenless nuc then put the frame set up in it.
 welcome aboard!

[Finsky]

It is better to make a little nuc. One frame of bees is enough. If queen is in coffee cup size colony it will get nosema or something.

You can help it when you put tiny colony to the top of bigger hive.

One consep is that put double screen between little nuc and keep queen over that. When nuc has been there couple of days. put exluder and newspaper between nuc and bigger hive. Bees emerge to nuc and begin to rise small colony's brood. So you have a queen with good care.

[Michael Bush]

Banking can mean a lot of things.  You can use a batter box where there are workers free in the box and queens in cages and keep queens for a week or so.  You can put queen cages on top of the top bars of a small queenless nuc with a 3/4" shim to make room and keep them for a few weeks if you have to.  Like Finski, I prefer to just put one queen and some bees in a small nuc.  A two frame medium nuc (that I build since I can't find them) with a frame a brood, a frame of honey and a queen and some bees works great to keep a queen indefinately as long as you don't let it get too crowded.  The queen can lay and life goes on.  You can move it to a three frame nuc if it gets too crowded and up to a five if it's still too crowded and meantime you still have a spare queen you can put in a hive or even combine the nuc with a hive for even better acceptance.  It's a nice thing to do with old queens when requeen (at least a couple of them) so if an introduction fails you still have some spare queens.  It's also nice to put a brood frame with a capped swarm cell and a frame of honey in to let them finish out the queen and then you have a spare.