Feisty bee behaviour

[Jon]

What is the best way of carrying a queen cell from one apiary to another, How long can one keep a queen cell outside a hive? How does one keep it at the right temperature - or are all these questions a bit irrelevant?

It is a bad idea to try and move queen cells until the queen is fully formed, ie less than 2 days from emergence.
At this point the cells are actually very hardy and unless you physically damage or seriously *chill a cell, it will hatch normally.
I brought home 7 cells from the association apiary on Friday evening, a 2 mile bike ride, and put them into apideas before heading out to the bar.
5 queens had emerged when I checked on Sunday morning and the other two were chewing their way out of the cells. And before anyone suggests it, I was not in the bar from Friday evening until Sunday morning.

Queen cells are at their most vulnerable in the four days immediately after capping as the larvae is going through a series of stages and is very easily damaged.

* chill not shill.