I took my first stab at rearing queens this week. Used Cloake Board methods but didn't quite exactly follow the instructions to a tee. Here was my process, day 0 is when egg was laid. I didn't have a cloake board per se but I used queen excluder, piece of tin, and spacer with a 1 3/8" dia entrance hole.
-5 days (May 17) hive turned around so original entrance was facing backwards and new entrance added to the upper, queenleess half. All frames with capped brood was moved to the top and 3-4 frames of bees from the bottom was shook into the top. Took another box of capped brood donated from other hives and added on as well.
0 days (May22) eggs laid
+2 days (May 24) Went through queenless starter and cut every queen cell out. Shook more bees from bottom, queenright half into queenless starter. Installed frame with cell bars to get "polished".
+3 days (May 25) Grafts made from donor colony. Donor hive overwintered well with excess stores, built up fast, has 3 supers of uncured honey already, and are workable in shorts and t-shirt. Larvae that were grafted were right next to eggs that hadn't hatched yet, they are likely <12 hrs old. Frame of open nectar on one side of grafts and frame of pollen on the opposite side
+4 days (May 26) Checked for cell take (15 of 20). After seeing cells started and filling with royal jelly I removed the piece of tin between the excluder and spacer. Closed off back entrance on the bottom board to force all the returning foragers to come into the box with the grafts. Added feed jars, will keep full until next week.
+10 days (June 4) Morning will be splitting dinks into nucs with 2 frames of bees and brood. Feed jars will be put on. In the afternoon I'll take the ripe cells and put one in each nuc.
+20 days (June 14) Check for eggs in nucs. Combine nucs back to queenright colony that didn't take.
