Hard lesson in queen rearing

I've been self teaching, with the help of YouTube, to breed queens. Or actually rear them, breeding would imply specific genetics and traits and all I'm trying to do is successfully get some mated queens. My purpose is simply to have some for the occasional club member who loses their queen. The thought is that even a poor queen is better than no queen. In any case.  I grafted on Sunday two weeks back, then last Monday put six cells in cages to emerge on Friday. I was going to be out of town and figured the bees would feed the new queens. Found out a hard lesson that it's not so. On Sunday, of the six caged, four emerged and three died.  Although it seems controversial, I think I'll put a little honey in the cages next time if I have to be away.  On a different note. While working the club yard Sunday we found a weak colony with a wax moth infestation in the top box. Moved the frames around and consolidated the best frames into one box. In the process we found the queen. I caught her and intended to mark her but she got away.  Looked in the box today and they have 4 capped and 4 un-capped queen cells. I look at it this way, the old queen wasn't very good, population was down and not a lot of brood. So maybe her daughter will do better.  Along the same lines. Mary, Ed and I went to Indian Harbour Beach Sunday and removed a colony from under an old bird gazebo. Very calm bees, we didn't even light a smoker.  Mary took home a nuc with five frames of comb and brood. I put together a single 8 frame box with brood comb and a frame of honey. Today there are at least five capped queen cells in the cut out (didn't look at all frames) and Mary says there are cells on her nuc too.  Will wait until the 24th to go in again.