1st run. Waited till exactly 3 days. Moved nicot cups to cell frame. Only 5 of the eggs were larve. I was already in the process of moving everything and could not go back. I learned that I probably should waited a little longer for more of the eggs to have hatched and royal jelly to be fed.
5 of the cells did take. Since I have limited resources on hives right now, I decided to start over since I wanted 10-12 queens and don't want to have to do 2 full runs. I decided to just start over.
2nd run. Waited till exactly 3 days (this morning). Only a few of the eggs had hatched so I decided to wait till tonight thinking I would still be in the correct age window. So tonight I went to put the nicot cups in the frame and all but abot 5 of the larve/eggs had been removed. I think only 2 are viable larve.
So for the moment, I had my nuc cell builder ready to go and I installed the cell frame in and will wait 24hrs and see.
I was supposed to get a chinese grafter today after waiting 3 weeks for a order with some items that was delayed due to a childs suit being on back order only to find out that the grafter was not delivered due to being out of stock. The grafter was my backup and I planned to try it if this did not work this time. If they would have notified me that it was out of stock, i could have gotten it from somewhere else. I am so frustrated.
I already installed the Nicot in the donor hive again to try again.
What did I do wrong if anything? I did reuse the cups the 2nd time but did give the bees time to clean them out for 2 days prior to confining the queen.