I split my hive this spring. When I checked them at day 9 there were about 20 nice queen cells. Not being very experienced with rearing queens I left them in the hives. So my question is, how tough are queen cells? I have seen them offered on the internet, can you ship them? Or wait for them to emerge?
If I knew someone local that needed a queen, I'd consider giving away a queen cell or 3, other wise, I'd let the colony sort and choose a queen themselves. Perhaps thin out some of the cells to the best in my eyes. crossing county and state lines is another ball game.
I let them figure it out. We split one hive into three, then one hive swarmed, so we now have four. They are nice big fat queens. :)