Before I worked at the Dyce Lab I thought that introducing virgins was problematical and to be avoided. However, I learned that this is not correct. What we did was to raise queens in the usual way, with a standard cell builder. We did use wood cell holders, but this is not crucial by any means. 

Professor Calderone likes to move the cells into an incubator as soon as they’re sealed. Myself, I prefer to incubate on the last two days only. The cells are allowed to emerge in a little bottle or cage. They have to be watched carefully because the queens sometimes crawl back into the cells and get trapped. 

As soon as they were all emerged, we took them out one at a time and marked them. This is a very good idea, but of course, not essential. Why is it good? Because when you go to check to see if the queen is mated and laying, you will know that it is yours and not some rogue queen the bees cooked up on their own.

The virgins should be introduced in a good introducing cage. We had plastic tubes that could be loaded with a big wad of queen cage candy. You want the queen confined for a couple of days. A strong hive will eat through the candy pretty fast, but it would be a mistake to introduce a valuable queen into a strong hive anyway.

Introduce her to a 2 – 4 frame nuc. This many bees is a lot easier to manage than a larger number. Once the queen is mated and laying properly, you can combine the nuc onto a poor colony, or allow it to build up on its own. 

Pete

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