> i'm not sure on what rational the "unnaturalness of feeding empty frames 
into the brood nest" is somehow worse than "the unnaturalness of using 
nucs and swarms to draw comb for your established colonies".

That's not my point at all, but it's a good point: calling one beekeeping 
practice better or worse because it's more or less "natural" rapidly leads 
to absurdities.  

My point isn't that any practice is "bad" because it's "unnatural"; my 
point is that "unnatural" practices can lead to "unnatural" circumstances 
(sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.)  For example, it's "natural" 
for a colony to have one queen, but by "unnaturally" separating a colony 
with a queen excluder, one could run a two-queen hive.  Comparably, if 
we "unnaturally" intersperse empty frames into an established brood nest, 
it's possible to wind up with "unnaturally" high levels of drone comb.  
Whether that's good or bad to have unnaturally high (or low) levels of 
drone comb is a separate question.  On that separate question, I believe 
low levels (even unnaturally low levels) of drone comb are generally 
desirable for honey production, particularly because of varroa.

>i'm not sure why you are so quick to discount my experience, especially 
when you already said you've never done this and let the drone brood 
actually emerge.

That's not exactly true either to say I've "never done this."  My 30-40% 
example/experiment was done differently, but I've tried lots of things -- 
some more systematically than others -- and my experience leads me to 
doubt that what you're saying would apply very broadly at all.  I guess I 
could say I also wonder if your 15% figure is an under-exaggeration.  Is 
that just an eyeball figure?

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