Many thanks for that Jon - very helpful.

Another question occurs to me. I know about stocking them with young bees and last year (my first year of queen rearing) all I did was use bees from brood frames having caged the queen and shaken the frames lightly to dislodge flying bees.

So my question is - is there any reason I shouldn't just use bees from my supers instead? I'm sure I watched a youtube video a while ago of someone stocking Apideas doing just that.