I've tried a few methods so far and trying to find my groove. My best (and easiest) so far have been splits with fresh hatched brood for emergency cells. They went very well and produced good laying queens. I tried grafting with little luck until I tried in a strong hive with a Cloake board... but that took a lot of mingling for several days, which got the bees fussy by the end of that process... which is why I wanted to move the cells out of there. One combination I've not tried is to move the existing queen out to a nuc and use the full queenless hive for graft raising. I may try that next. With that method, should I put the queen back after, or just let her build up a new hive from her nuc? I've also been thinking to pull the brood frames out of her hive, leaving her with the foragers and stores to simulate swarm and boost honey collection... then use the brood and nurses to build up a number of new nucs (actually a four-compartment queen castle) for grafted cells. I know I'll hear both ways being 'right'... but which would be better and why? Many cells from a single strong hive, or a cell or two each in several nucs? The end quantity would be the same, and going straight to the nucs saves me some movement and lowers risk of them killing each other, but will the nuc produce as well as the strong hive? The nuc has smaller numbers... but also would have less to maintain and feed. Would the result be roughly the same? I'm getting better at grafting and think I'll prefer it over unpredictable emergency cells. I'm just looking for the process to get the cells finished out well, with the least disruption to the bees. I'm no breeder, so for me the goal is in increase. I'm not expecting to jump from 2 to 100 this year, but 2 to 10 would be nice.
I don't mind failing, as I learn a bit each time. So far, the summary of my lessons is that the bees do quite well, and anything I do, regardless of intent, will actually slow their progress. Go figure.