Micheal Palmer said(speaking of two queen hives):

 "In  17 of the 50, I found multiple queens in the bottom unit. That's
almost  30%. In one instance, there were two daughters and the old queen
laying on  adjacent combs."




Wow,
I  have stopped putting queens in strong hives because above 30% of the time
or more they get a rejected(queenless hive) and i just cant see that it is
worth my money. Now If his(Micheals) numbers were representative of all
hives then it stands to reason that another solid percentage will get
knocked out by the old queen.
On the other hand, I have made probably hundreds of splits using caged
queens and about 2-4 frames of brood and my acceptance rates have  been
around 95% overall.
I talked to another old time beekeper and he reported the same stats.
I do use the shipping cage with a candy plug to release.
John Horton

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