Banking queens till weather warms

[BEEMAN]

The southern Louisiana weather has been very mild the last month so I ordered some queens to requeen some of my hives. I received my queens on
April 1, 2007. Since then the weather has been in the lower fourties/upper thirties. Yesterday and today it has been very overcast and rainy and looks to continue for a few more days. Can anyone advise of a good way to bank the queens until the weather gets better? I have been feeding them honey and water. This seems to keep them active, but I am afraid if I don't get them into the hives soon, they will die. Any advise is appreciated. :?

BEEMAN

[Michael Bush]

If you have queens in cages with attendants and the attendants are still alive and healthy and candy, you can keep queens for a couple of weeks by keeping them in a quiet dark room temperature place and giving them a drop of water every day.

If you need to keep them longer, you can put shake some bees into a small cage and put the queens in the cage with some candy and give them a few drops of water every day.

[BEEMAN]

Thanks for the info Michael. I was afraid I would loose them. The weather has changed again today. It is sunny and they say it will be in the eighties.
Not sure if I will be able to get to requeening today or not. May have to wait till Friday if the weather holds out. Glad to know I have been doing the correct thing to keep them alive. The rotation of water one day and honey the next day on the screen of the queen cages seems to be working. All queens and attendants are doing fine so far. I read all your posts and replies and I find them very informative to a novice beekeeper like me.

Thanks again Michael