Sounds like you had a very interesting and rewarding year regardless of the poor weather.
Our own experience with queen rearing is much the same, apideas and grafting is more labour intensive and not really necessary for the average beekeeper raising queens to improve their own stock. I think we achieved better results using three frame mating nucs and judicious use of double screen boards, the queens were able to crack on with laying with no fuss or worry and introduction is much easier with mature queens but again, most of the new queens are simply upgraded into nucs and then hives, only a few go the introduction route.
I generally have chosen queens in triple brood configuration by late April / early May and depending on colony status, I will rearrange the nest. Sometimes I sort the older brood above an access board before changing it to a double screen board and adding a frame or two of eggs. I like this approach as it fills the top box with young bees and there are more to follow once the board is in place and only sealed brood is present, two frames of eggs is ample for options to split and also harvest cells. Sometimes I just rearrange the brood and go straight for the double screen board and remove the top box when cells are drawn.
As an example from a colony this year, I fitted a double screen board in early May and returned four days later to leave them with open cells only. I left the box in place until the cells were capped, left one and harvested some for the incubator before moving it to its own floor and stand. My brood boxes contain nine frames so I figured removing nine frames of brood and bees would check the mother colony and I was quite surprised to find this wasn't the case and at the end of May I rearranged the sealed brood above an access board and three supers, the boxes were all stuffed with bees. A few days later, when I was happy all the brood in the upper box was definitely sealed, I added two frames of eggs making it an eleven frame box. I harvested another cell and split the top box away to two nucs with a sealed cell in each.
Again, far from checking the original colony, I had to give her a second brood box and two more supers, she soon had these full of bees and at the end of June I found a charged cell in the upper box. I broke it down but found a single, charged cell on two more inspections. Not at all happy, I decided to move the queen away to a nuc and she is now in a three tier nuc arrangement going into Winter. The original hive was left as a double brood and successfully requeened and produced five very full supers, I've not seen her yet but did see BIAS.
The first split I removed built up strongly and needed a second brood box and the other two are going into Winter as eleven frame, single box colonies.
One colony is now five and the work involved was minimal and really very easy.
The apideas were a mixed bunch by comparison some had introduced virgins and harvested cells while others had grafted cells. They were all populated with a scoop of young bees after being shaken into a container with a light spray. Fondant as feed and kept in the dark, in a garage. Quite a few went AWOL and needed replacing later.
A couple of virgins brought on in the incubator were run into three frame nucs (basically sealed brood, pollen and spare comb with a pound jar of light syrup as a feeder) and one or two others were introduced to queenless colonies from failed matings.
My friend might give apideas another go next year but I don't think I'll bother, maybe I'm just lazy but I think my bees seem very happy and do a better job with a simple approach.
I really think queen rearing is a part of beekeeping that everyone should try, full supers are nice but your own queens are far more rewarding.
