Practical beekeeping, and queen rearing

I've had an interesting week, a bit of a roller coaster actually. Some things went as planned and some didn't. One of my cell builders failed miserably and at the same time I cut some capped queen cells from two beehives. One that I intentionally made queen-less and one that I didn't. So in all I actually ended up with more than the cell builder would have yielded. Early in the week I was faced with a dilemma, putting together mating nucs for all of the unexpected queens. It was looking like I might get 20 when I was just expecting 10 or 12. I have the boxes, the problem has been having a frame or two of bees for a mating nuc. I was kicking the idea around Wednesday and Thursday, of what to do. The whole thing is a bit ironic as I've been advocating having a plan for everything. I actually have a long term plan for making queens, I just lost sight of the obvious. My long term plan is to have 30-40 mating nucs and swapping 12-18 mated queens each week. My original plan was to start out with 10-12 mating nucs, and as the queens mate, and brood grows in the nucs, I could split the nucs to make more. That was the plan. It's actually worked somewhat but a bit slow. The problem is, or at least was, that my focus has been on that plan and I sort of missed the obvious, more on that later. My long term plan is to have three breeder queens, each one perhaps a different breed. I'd like to get a Carpenter Martha, maybe a Saskatraz, and an Italian hybrid. The queens would all be open mated so the end results might be interesting. To make cell builders, which I currently like using a 5 frame nuc box for this, I need four or five strong colonies. The idea is to start with 1 builder and add one each week. Then break down and rebuild the oldest builder every three weeks. That's the plan now, it might turn into just two builders, it depends on how well I get at grafting. So this means I need 8 strong colonies to do what I plan. Thursday night I woke up and had an epiphany, I currently have, or at least on Thursday had 16 beehives, here is the obvious, I have twice the number of colonies than I need.  Sort of lost track of this in everything else that I'm doing. Ten of those are what I'd consider to be strong colonies.  So Friday I just broke down two weaker colonies and used those bees to make mating nucs. I had enough boxes, made up another triple 3 frame queen castle. One of the colonies I broke down was a queen-less hive from a recent cut out, didn't get the queen but I had 6 frames of bees and 5 brood frames. There were the beginnings of some queen cells on the comb, with some regrets I cut them off. In the end I pulled five mated queens and put 18 in mating nucs. There are 6 cells in the current builder which I expect to come out next Friday, the plan is to make one more triple 3 frame castle and another twin 2 frame mating nuc. This will put me at 28 mating nucs. I'm also thinking of parting with a couple of beehives since I have more than I need or want. I guess I got lost in the excitement of getting more colonies of bees.