There appears to be little on this subject in the literature. However, the
general principles would presumably be something like this. First,
transfer the sealed queen cell into a cage and into an incubator.
Second, mark the queen after hatching (and DO NOT clip her wings!).
Third, mail her (with attendants?) to your customer. Fourth, dequeen
colony and (time gap?) introduce caged virgin queen in the brood
area.

Now, surely, the tricky part. We know that open mated queens and AI
queens (after two doses of gas) acquire and emit scent, specifically,
the queen phenorome. A virgin lacks the scent, so why would the
workers want to decage her? If the latter is correct, surely it can be
turned to opportunity by the keeper decaging the virgin after SHE has
acquired the colony scent. In theory, she would then be pretty much
ignored by the workers while she starts her orientation flights, and
hardens out before taking mating flights. In due course, she would
arrive back one day with the magical scent, and everything would go
gangbusters. Somewhere along the line, she would have destroyed
(on your behalf, as it were) any queen cells started by the colony.

But somehow, this all sounds too easy to me; it would mean virgin
queens toppling mated queens in the queen industry. If that was the
case, queen breeders would have a total breeze of a life, not needing
hundreds of nucs for open mating queens before they are mailed to
customers.

Or have I missed something? (By the way, I work with AM scutellata).

Barry Sergeant
Kyalami
South Africa