Just mentioned punching on Barbarians thread..
The old fellow I used to aid caring for his bees did things all wrong, but they worked.. of course, I didn't know they were all wrong until I started reading about the methods being described today.
Reading about queen rearing tends to confuse the heck out of me... Unless your trying to make a LOT of queens it doesn't have to be hard.
All we ever used was a strong Nuc, freshly made. Two or three frames of capped brood, no young larvae or eggs etc.. with the bees on them. A frame of honey and pollen, and an extra shake of nurse bees. Any field bees will fly back to their own hive, so this needs to be fed. I would make up the nuc in the evening and screen it before I left, put syrup on it and leave it be until morning. Punch the cells, form the base, dip in melted wax and set into the cell cups.. He had wooden cups he made himself, I have JZBZ cups. Carry the frame out to the nuc and slide it in. That evening unscreen it, and come back in eleven days. Make up Nuc's using the old queens in the morning, and that afternoon put the cells from the cell bar into the hives that were queenless, leaving the bees that made them up one of the cells.. If anything goes wrong the old queen could be reunited with the colony to wait and try another day.
Everyone says this won't work, not enough bees, not enough royal jelly etc.. Having seen it work, and work very well, I can only assume them other folks are trying to make too many cells. Eight is good, ten will work, I wouldn't try more than that on the nuc. Make up a ten frame box filled with capped brood and nurse bees and I would bet you could easily make 20 cells, but have never tried it.
No starter colony, no finisher colony, no worries about all that other stuff until you decide you want to go commercial.
