Lovely queens

I have been lucky enough to fall on my feet with nice queens this year. There has been some breeding (by which I mean selection of the best stocks and taking their swarm cells), some culling of mean queens and some successful rearing (cells to mated queens in mating nucs).
I’ve had a few queens go without permission, but its all turned out pretty well. Even the mean hive that I tried to requeen has lost its queen and become queenless and yet strangely still become less agitated and aggressive than when it had a queen.
Yesterday I sold a couple of queens to a friend at the bee club. He had some mean hives and wanted to do something about it – just as well as they were sited on an allotment. When I was there I stood across the apiary from them, about 15-20ft, and even without approaching never mind opening those hives I was attacked by a couple. Now I have had some rough hives, but never one with a guard radius like that. Either way those queens should be lovely and whether it takes a day or a month or two they should change those hives for the bettter. They were introduced to a hive of other bees from mixed hives to allow introduction before merging with the target colonies.
Oh the only queen rearing issue I have had is that my sky blue queen marker is a bit flakey. The ‘ink’ keeps separating and becoming watery and the queens keep rubbing it off around the hive. Hey, it ain’t all that bad if that’s all you have to worry about.