> You can set up a queen nursery as follows:
>         1. Put a queen excluder on top of the brood chamber of the nursery hive.
>         2. Put a super on over  the excluder.
>         3. Remove all attendants from the cages so they will not fight with the
>            house bees.
>         4. Place queen cages, screen side down, over the openings between the
>            top bars of the super.
>         5. Invert the inner cover and place back on the hive.
 
For northerners, this method requires some fine tuning, since the bees
will often retreat into a cluster at night, abandoning the supers - and
the queens. The next day, the reason for the loss of the queens may not be
apparent, since the bees will be back up.  Moreover, if the queens are
placed outside the volume occupied by the smallest cluster that is likely
to ocur if a late storm comes along, their survival will be uncertain.
 
We often place queens in cages (with or without attaendants) directly on
the top bars of a brood chamber, just above the brood, and place a raised
rim lid over them.  A sack over the cages, and under the lid can help
ensure warmth.  If there are candy holes that are not corked from the
outside, they must be covered, or all the queens will be released in a day
or so.
 
> If there is a dearth, the colony needs to be fed or else they won't
> always feed the stored queens.
 
The host hive must be well fed *before* putting queens on, and kept well
fed during the task, if the queens are all to be cared for and not
damaged. Although bees may *appear* to accept the queens otherwise,
careful examination of queens added to hives that are not well fed often
show some queens with feet missing.
 
It is also wise to move the hive aside a ways and/or turn it around - if
you have several hives nearby - so that the older field bees will go
elsewhere and not harrass the new queens if there is a dearth.  This is
assuming, of course, that the population will not then be so low that no
bees are left to care for the queens.
 
Allen