Usual disparity of opinions.
Not sure how much experience some are based on.
Not going to argue with anyone as each to their own.
We use purchased (Nicot) white plastic press in cages for all our queen programme queen introduction, though for time saving we also use the shipping cages in the field in the main hives. They cost buttons so there is no mileage in making our own.
The following steps are not in actual order, just things that should be done. All variants reduce success rates, sometime by a little, sometimes a lot.
We ALWAYS press the cage into hatching brood with zero hive bees and zero attendants at the time of caging.
We dump the cage in a tub of water before opening it and removing the queen only (the water slows them all down and stops queen flight) and inserting her through the hole in the cage and reinserting the plug once she has walked clear.
Put the comb back in the hive and place another frame of brood right next to it so the cage cannot fall away allowing early release.
Fill the candy tube with very firm candy (to make release quite slow).
Kill all queen cells.
Resist all temptations to have a look in for *at least* a week. Every day earlier that you go in reduces acceptance rates.
Do not have unrealistic expectations. Despite an earlier post to that effect, we NEVER get 97.5% acceptance apart from on tiny runs. That's 39 out of 40. Think I once got 40 out of 40...but just once. 39 is truly exceptional. One lot today had 20 out of 21. Even that I would consider exceptional. Anything above 90% is pretty decent.
