My first round of queen rearing started well and ended badly. I raised good-looking cells in a double brood box colony with a Cloake board and then split the colony multiple ways to make up essentially 2-frame nucs for mating (in a circle split).

Work commitments meant I had to split the colony and add the QC's on the same day. This was the 9th day after grafting. I checked yesterday. All the queens had emerged properly by the looks of the cells (flap still attached). However, many of the virgin queens were absent (and I'm usually OK at seeing them) and in the nucs with no obvious new virgins there were charged QC's being started, perhaps 2 days old.

My interpretation is that the virgins emerged properly but were then killed by the nuc who then started their own. The QC's were grafted from a different (better) stock.

Any idea? I'd usually use the cells on the 10th or 11th day after grafting, but can't think of anything else I'd do that was different. Hooper suggests making up nucs two days before use, culling any cells started and then adding the QC. I've done it on the same day and would have thought that the bees would have torn the cell down if they weren't happy with it.

Frustrating ... but on the plus side, the queens that were visible are looking good ... just fewer than I'd hoped (and with near-perfect conditions for mating this week predicted).