Anyone who quotes the fake Einstein quote tends to make me doubt everything else.  However, the commercial beekeeper who introduced me to bees in 1974 had VERY HIGH queen acceptance.  He always introduced queen using a push-in cage over a section of comb with both open cells and some with nectar.  He taught me to use a glass of warm water.  He'd take the queen cage, dunk the queen and any attendent's in the warm water - just lower down until fully submerged, then pull out.  Then, with wings wet, it was easy to separate queen from attendent's, tip the queen into the push in cage, and press in the cage.  The queen was both disoriented by this and couldn't fly off, so he didn't lose queens during the transfer.  No need for sugar or honey.  He'd leave her a couple of days.  If the bees in the colonies were slow to accept, he did observe that queens could feed themselves - reason he always found a patch of nectar.  Acceptance rates near perfect. 
 
J.J. Bromenshenk
Bee Alert
Missoula, Mt
 
 

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