I should have roller caged those queen cells with the ornate head/foot gear yesterday when I had the chance. Two of them were torn down when I visited an hour ago so two Apideas freshly charged with bees from my own apiary will have to wait for a surrogate mum.

I'm thinking that I missed an emergency Q cell in the host colony and that a virgin emerged ahead of the grafts earlier today. Maybe tomorrow I'll rearrange the colony with a queen excluder and carry on using it as a queen-right cell raiser?

For the time being I have at least one extra queen cell on that frame.