I set up the same nurse hive that was at the farm and was used for Q4 with the cloak board. I had learned at the MSBA meeting this summer to be sure to put only capped brood in the box above the queen excluder and to shake all the nurse bees off the open brood as well. That all went fine. I saw Cleopatra, with her blue dot, and made sure she was in the bottom with some empty comb and the open brood. Turned the hive around, installed the slider right away and closed it up. Liz and I grafted from a Cleopatra daughter in my yard, 10 wax dipped cells. Installed them in the nurse hive, which had an impressive bee density. Liz removed the slider after 48 hours and photographed 5 started cells. On day 13, we can back to harvest the queen cells…. and found no cells at all. We looked through all the frames, hoping for a spurious queen cell at least and I spotted fresh eggs and larva. Liz humored me, thinking I was delirious, but after a closer look agreed. I concluded that I must have missed a second queen or virgin in the hive and locked here above the queen excluder. She took care of the grafted cells. We closed it up and left a bit bummed.
Today, about a week later, I returned and found more brood above the queen excluder and a nice looking queen. I marked her with green and with 2 frames of brood put her in a nuc. She is now at my house. She is somewhat different from the Cleopatras that I have already, as she is not a sister (unlike the ones already at my house) but a daughter. Additionally, she is the only queen that mated from the farm, not my house. I also removed the cloak board and started feeding the hive. A small brake before the final Q7.