Banking a queen for 4 months

vmmartin · April 23, 2011, 01:58:21 PM

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.

Kathyp · April 23, 2011, 02:19:49 PM

wow. 4 months and the hive didn't fail? that's pretty good. must have been brood in the cutout comb?

AllenF · April 23, 2011, 11:32:32 PM

That is amazing.

vmmartin · April 23, 2011, 11:46:53 PM

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.

bee-nuts · April 24, 2011, 03:00:10 AM

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.

Michael Bush · April 24, 2011, 06:17:28 AM

She would have not been laying all winter anyway.

bee-nuts · April 24, 2011, 11:48:17 AM

"She would have not been laying all winter anyway."

Did you see the location, average low in January is 60.?

Kathyp · April 24, 2011, 11:51:39 AM

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!

AllenF · April 24, 2011, 07:23:27 PM

Still amazing to think about.

vmmartin · April 24, 2011, 11:01:22 PM

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.

Michael Bush · April 24, 2011, 11:04:04 PM

Never been to Kountze, Texas. Perhaps you're right. I've seen them banked that long and they did fine.

Dave360 · April 24, 2011, 11:22:55 PM

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

JP · April 24, 2011, 11:23:04 PM

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