Blake this was a good talk. I have found that buying queens has failed for me. every year that I have bought queens they either are not good from the seller or they are damaged in the mail and they just do not lay something is wrong with them my hives supper seed them I just waist my money. the places i get the queen from are good places so I have to believe the mail people are hurting the queens. so what I did last year is remove a queen from a big hive and let that hive make me queens after they are capped I remove them and make small matung nucs and as the spring/summer progress I add frames of capped brood to stregthen them. and it worked out well. now I did not get any honey from the hivs I did that to, but that was ok I had encrease my apairy. I used the double screen board and put the q in the top box and put it back on the same hive that gave here warmth she kept going and the hive I remover her from made me right many cells to be used. I did buy some queens from another person and the same happened with those queens some were no good . I just cant waist money that way. I have real bad vision so grafting is not something I can depend on even though I keep trying I just can not see I have tryed lights and magnify glass but I am going to keep trying I think they are to old and the bees reject my graft for that reason. who ever made grafting look easy was deceiving. to me it is not easy at all. any way Blake I enjoyed this it was a good talk. hope you are having a good christmas.
You can pull a small split with your queen to make cells in a strong colony. Transfer a frame with open cells a day or two before they are sealed into a queenless colony and the success rate is increased vs a rejected mated queen.. Grafting gets better with practice and I wear a magnifier as damaging the larvae gets torn down or if the bees don't want to rear a queen (queenless for a while) the open cell seems to work better IMO.. Queens bought often are in a BANK and lose their pheromone and ability to lay, the reason supercedure happens, you are better off to make your own as described above.
