With the recent talk of queen rearing and grafting, I have decided to share the following. I am learning form a fellow, that raises queens differently from anyone that I have studied anywhere in the world. What he does is place the queen in a queen excluder cage that holds an empty brood frame. placing this right back in the hive. When the larva is the right age, and all will be the same age in each area, he removes this frame, cuts a long strip of this comb with the contained larva, shaves off a small portion of the comb face, leaving the larva automatically in a shallower cup than was original. Then, cuts these into one pieces cups separating them , placing them in a Nicot holding holder, (The pale yellow cell cup block), (the one that you would normally place the little hard pale brown cell cups in), securing these on the bar lined up as a normal nicot go round. Then he places a drop of wet wax to make sure the cups are bonded in place, then adding this set up to his cell builder, and the results are astonishing! The larva are never disturbed.
Phillip