I am no longer surprised to be disappointed with emergency queens:  I cannot see exactly how much royal jelly is in the cup; I think the bees do what they need to do to get a queen on the wing and back as soon as possible, thereby sacrificing potential overall quality for the sake of colony survival; I've had poorer brood patterns enough to notice with emergency queens than with queens I've grafted off of chosen stock; and those emergency queens I have allowed to stay are almost never on par the following spring with queens that have been raised through the grafting process.

Despite this I have a nuc I am allowing to raise a queen, though I suspect I will pinch her and combine for winter in the end.

The way I see it, just because I graft does not mean I am preventing the bees from choosing what larvae to raise queens from.  The bees are always choosing which ones to (or not to) raise based on the resources they have available, and for reasons I don't think we really know...

Meddling along,

Monk Benedict


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