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.
wow. 4 months and the hive didn't fail? that's pretty good. must have been brood in the cutout comb?
That is amazing.
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.
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.
She would have not been laying all winter anyway.
"She would have not been laying all winter anyway."
Did you see the location, average low in January is 60.?
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!
Still amazing to think about.
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.
Never been to Kountze, Texas. Perhaps you're right. I've seen them banked that long and they did fine.
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
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