a Peter Borst snip... 

Charles, what on earth is this based on? I don't believe this is true at all. And I am not saying queen breeders are unscrupulous but the standard practice is to get the queen out of the nuc as soon is she is laying. What you are describing would reduce production by about 75%. Who could afford to do that?

my comments..
first your estimate of lost production is puffed up quite a bit.  this question and strategy falls into what would be known in business school as physical or business  leverage.... that is how quickly you can turn an item and is the other standard alternative to financial leverage if you wish to expand profits and profitability.  it is amazing how many basic idea the business school folks steal from the physics.  basically business leverage works out to be how often you can 'turn' the inventory.  

secondly you are confusing what you know and your experience with 'standard practice'.  now if you had pulled off a well designed survey and got a bunch of queen rearing folks to reply you might be able to make this claim.  l am GUESSING here you have not and also that what strategy folks employ is much broader than that this strategy POSSIBLY changes with time and season.  I know here the potential for drone laying queen spikes in the early spring and again during mid summer heat and then again in the fall.  If I was rearing queens to sell I would definitely take this into consideration before I went to the trouble to catch, cage and ship a queen. there are a lot of folks selling queens that seem to know little about genetics or bee breeding or selection.   

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