I bought the David Woodward book and frankly I was disappointed by it. It contains those unnecessary frilly bits which have been shown many years ago to be pointless. Terry Clare was the first I heard, 9 years ago, saying this is unnecessary:

'To increase the acceptance of grafted larvae it is important to 'prime' the queen cell cups once they have been attached to the cell bar ..... In a hive that has been prepared for feeding grafted larvae it is important to place the cell cups in the middle of the brood for one or two days prior to grafting. Priming is essential if a high percentage of grafted larvae are to be accepted.'

Nope, it really isn't. What is essential is that the stock is in good condition and well fed, then you can get 90%+ of larvae accepted immediately in a rearranged queenright system as mentioned above. He also says 'larvae to be grafted should be 12-24 hrs old and larvae older than 36 hrs after hatching are unsuitable.' We reckon about 6 hrs old is a good guide, 24 hrs far too old and anything anywhere near 36 hrs is going to give really poor intercastes.

As for the Cloake board, my two queen rearing partners used to use one but it requires several visits and takes time to prepare. Over a couple of years we came to the conclusion that despite the extra visits it didn't give any better results than the simpler methods from Wilkinson and Brown and other methods mostly discussed on here (thanks Jon ). No reason not to use the Cloake board method if you wish of course, it is just that it isn't necessary. By far the over-riding influence on the success rate (as long as you are not clumsy with the young larvae) is the prosperity of the colonies. At times last summer (during prolonged wet weather) even the young brood in the donor colonies was being abandoned and we struggled to get many queen cells to take. A bit embarrassing as we were preparing for our queen rearing workshops at which we'd promised to have Amm queen cells available for the participants to take away.