>However, the real question is not so much how to avoid inferior queens but how to raise better ones.

Irrespective of any underlying colony selection mechanisms, one simple way is to graft far more than you need and select/cull heavily for whatever traits you are selecting for.

I am fairly new to grafting and queen rearing but that has worked for me so far.

It is quite a lottery though. If you remove a queen from an apidea they will make an emergency queen cell which generally results in a small worker sized 'scrub' queen but occasionally the 500 of so bees in an apidea will produce a decent queen even though most of them on paper are the wrong age to be feeding up a larva to queen status.

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