I have to ask why would you want more of those by making more queens??? I would find some nice, gentle, stock to work with reproducing before I would go with what you describe.
I avoided trying to graft for a couple of years, and was going to get started this spring. I couldn't start when I wanted to, late cool spring, and the colonies had made no drones yet. When they had drones, my travel schedule wouldn't allow me to tend the grafts on the required intervals, so I did some traditional splits, and left them to make new queens on their own. When all was said and done, one colony appeared to be queenless after a month, so my first thought was 'give them a frame of brood'. Then I got to thinking a bit, I have all the gear, why give them a frame of brood, when I could instead give them a frame with grafted cups ? Worst case scenario, after a few days I would see none took and I could still give them a brood frame. So I got busy, and grafted one bar of cups, first time trying it. Those went into the queenless colony last Friday afternoon. Saturday morning it looked like this:-Have failed on my last two attempts doing notching. Have cups, but not attempted grafting yet. Any suggestions on methods that would be best that are easy for a small number of queen. I can set up a starter cell if needed.
Did you put the cups in to be cleaned first or did you graft right out of the bag?I avoided trying to graft for a couple of years, and was going to get started this spring. I couldn't start when I wanted to, late cool spring, and the colonies had made no drones yet. When they had drones, my travel schedule wouldn't allow me to tend the grafts on the required intervals, so I did some traditional splits, and left them to make new queens on their own. When all was said and done, one colony appeared to be queenless after a month, so my first thought was 'give them a frame of brood'. Then I got to thinking a bit, I have all the gear, why give them a frame of brood, when I could instead give them a frame with grafted cups ? Worst case scenario, after a few days I would see none took and I could still give them a brood frame. So I got busy, and grafted one bar of cups, first time trying it. Those went into the queenless colony last Friday afternoon. Saturday morning it looked like this:-
On Wednesday, that bar had 8 capped queen cells on it.
I know a lot of folks would be agonizing about a take rate of only 8 cells from 15 cups grafted on the bar, but I'm thrilled. This was WAY easier than I though it would be. My biggest problem now, getting together enough mating nucs on the weekend to deal with all of them. I can think of worse problems to have.
If you have the gear, go for it. Not much to lose, and a lot to gain.
I have to ask why would you want more of those by making more queens??? I would find some nice, gentle, stock to work with reproducing before I would go with what you describe.
Sorry that was not clear, I currently have 11 hives and most are not mean. But I would love to raise a few queens from my other hives."ditto"!!!!