I have had a question for along time and I wonder if anyone here can tell me. Say if I had a couple of queens from what ever source. and I didnt want to install them is there a good method of just keeping her alive maybe by using an excluder or mabe a minimum of a real small hive just to maintain her. I know it is not good medicine to keep her too long but I have been wondering if it is possible.
Sure, put her in a 5 frame nuc box. Do you have a couple other strong hives you can grab one or two brood frames out of with some capped honey and pollen?
She will need a colony to survive any length of time
You could make up some small colonies.
Take a 4-5 fram nuc and use a division board and have two small colonies.
An observation hive is a good home for a queen that has reduced egg-laying.
I've never used mating Nucs, but this may be a solution.
A jetner screen could be used to isolate a queen on an area of the frame, she would be able to lay eggs in those cells. Workers could get in and feed her or kill her.
why do you want to do this? Do you anticipate remorse for her demise?
I was thinking it might be a good thing to keep one in reserve or if something happened to make you change plans it is probably just hairbrained but I was curious I think I will start building some nucs and I was thinking you might be able to start a couple then let them build up again. I only have one hive so icould hold her till they made more brood frames up. I have gotten the impression that squeens are not always available. but i don't really know like if you wanted to keep building up as soon as the original hive recovered through the summer. anyway I see you have to have bees to keep her any length of time so you might as well just go ahead and builld the nucs thanks a lot