A friend who was re-queening a large number of hives gave me 30 wintered-over queens. He put them in plastic cages with a frame of brood and a frame of honey.
Rather than swap frames to add new brood every 5 days, I plan to stack the nuc on an existing, queenless nuc that was waiting for a new queen. That nuc is a healthy
hive from feral bees with plenty of brood and honey that has been queenless for two days.
Thoughts, cautions and suggestions?
Also - - - Will my existing feral nuc/colony be OK queenless for several weeks? Is it OK to wait until my supply of queens has been used before moving the nuc to a 10-frame and giving it a queen?
No. Of course it won't work. (Brain Phart). The feral nuc will run out of brood and that will be the end of it.
But I can put the queen bank next to the re-queen feral nuc, and take brood frames as needed. right?
I have set up queen banks. The bees will rear a new queen despite all those banked queens. The banked queens aren't laying. After that new queen has laid up all the space she can find, I catch her and remove her before they get a wild hair and kill those old queens... then the process repeats...
Thank you, MB. Do you put a queen screen between the main box and the queen bank - - ?
Does it matter if brood is placed in the same box as the banked queens, or will they find their way through the screen and take care of the banked queens anyway?
The banked queens are a very fine example of Italian lineage, running back 40+ years - - What do you think of using one to requeen the bottom box, rather than let it produce its own queen?
I set up my banks in eight frame medium boxes with a frame that holds two plastic JZBZ cage holders. I put a frame of brood from each of several hives and a couple of frames of honey. So it looks something like: HBBQBBH (H=Honey, B=Brood, Q=frame of queen cages) where the frame with the queens is wide (two rows of cages) so there are seven frames. In three or four weeks there will be a laying queen and I catch her and remove her. In three or four more there will be another and I repeat. I am afraid to leave her as I am afraid they will kill the banked queens, though they haven't. This is one eight frame box. Since I keep making them queenless they seldom get too strong and if they do I steal a frame of brood or two and give it to another hive.
http://shop.honeyrunapiaries.com/queen-banking-frame-jz-bz