> On the other hand, my first beekeeping mentor used to raise all his own
> queens from emergency cells.... The rest of the brood went into 5 frame
> nucs. All were made the same, with three frames of brood, making sure
> there were some eggs, one frame of honey, and one frame of comb or
> foundation.  These were carried to another yard. ... But the queen was
> usually a well fed, well bred one. I think the key was that he always
> did it on the spring flow, when bees are predisposed to raise queens
> anyway and drones were plentiful.

Thanks for the reply Dave.  Now that you mention it, I do recall that you
have been talking up the use of swarm cells.  My son likes to use them
too, and guess where he learned that?

I wonder if you recall what percent of the queenless splits managed to
raise queens, and what was the typical failure rate?  I can't recall
myself, and that would be of considerable interest here right now.  I
remember it was not ever very large if the splits were made on a spring
flow, but forget the numbers.

>  I still raise some this way, but I prefer to use cells.

I gather your preference for using cells is that the time without brood is
reduced?  In my experience it takes about 11 days to get a laying pattern
from a ripe cell vs. 21 for a dequeened hive, and that 10 day difference
can be important when building for a flow or pollination contract.

>  there are several on a frame, I may cut one or two off and push the top
> of the cell into a frame of brood. I've had good results that way.

Same here.  I wonder if you worry about the age of a cell when handling
it?  Of course, one cannot know that information when finding them in a
hive unless they are just being sealed, or about to emerge -- or can one?
Does it worry you at all?  I never gave it any consideration whatsoever,
but the texts do caution about handling cells at some stages.  Naturally,
we don't bang them around much.

>  I don't automatically use cells from every colony.

This is something I wonder about.  One of the reasons I decided to forsake
buying queens in any large number is that I had bad wintering losses in a
few yards and the location leads me to believe that it might be from the
queen stock we used for splits.  Maybe they are poor winterers or maybe
they cannot handle the tracheal mite.  Whatever the reason, I think we
paid for this loss and there is no reason to repeat the error now that the
losers are culled.  If we breed from good survivors, we should see
continuing improvement.

Each spring we find that only about 40% of the overwintered hives are
splittable, and I always wonder about the rest.  I always wonder if we
have some hives that just manage to make it through the year and winter
nicely, without making a contribution to our income.  Pollination
contracts make this less of a worry, though, since it is hive numbers we
hare paid for and honey production is of less importance.

allen