a Geoff Manning snip followed by my comments and questions..

Surely this is what all competent queen  breeders do in some form?  While
some when grafting may use the 'hunt and peck' method of choosing larvae, it
is much easier and convenient when producing large numbers to set up so that
the queen mother is contained on one frame for one day which is then removed
and then used to graft larvae that is only one day old.

> I am a bit confused here Geoff in the use of the word 'builder'?  I commonly use a starter and a finisher hive but do not know exactly what the quote is referring to when it uses the word builder?  Secondly you above quote seems to be about the 
'queen mother' hive and not the starter or finisher.  As far as my own experience this restricting the queen mother to a given number of frames (typically in the one's I have seen 3) may be used by small to mid sized queen producers it is not something I have seen in larger commercial queen rearing operations.  But of course your observation is correct you do not want the grafting crew to have to take a lot of time to search here and there for a larvae to graft.

Gene in central Texas...

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