a  snip from Cam Bishop 
>I assume the bees feed her, as they feed each other. But I have not actually observed it, since I usually wouldn't check on virgins after introduction until I thought they were mated and laying (best not to mess with them). Anyone else seen this?

my comments..
Over the last couple of years I have caged virgin queens in homemade 'curler cages' and then after they emerge introduced them either directly or not* into smallish (3 frame) nucs.  Either method seems to work fine and it has long been my OPINION that then letting these nucs set essentially undisturbed for about 3 weeks is the best policy < sometime I will routine check these sorts of nucs for population but almost never remove frames .  I had never even though about painting virgins until I read here that some have... always good to discover new possibilities.

As to stowing these.... I have banked these caged virgins in both queen right and queenless 'finisher' hives.  With the queenless hives these I store in racks in between frames of capped brood and in the queen right hives with an excluder generally I pull up one or two frames of unsealed brood exactly as you would set the 'finisher' hive up for finishing cells.  I do add a small quantity of feed constantly.  Not long after the virgins emerge I remove and crush the cell itself before replugging the cage < some small number of virgins will for some reason reenter the cell itself (I assume to access any food left there) and then for some reason are not capable of backing out of the cell.  Some small number of emerged virgins don't seem to get fed at all and I really wonder if this is some defect the workers recognize in the virgin?  I started using this 'system' originally to get some idea of just how many queen cells do not hatch at all < from this information when I do use cells themselves in nucs I now use two/nuc.  

*meaning the virgin set in their cages for a day in the nucs themselves before being released.       

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