Run-Away Split

MABA's August speaker, Sam Comfort, shared novel beekeeping and queen rearing practices with the club.   I was spellbound by Sam's life story and accomplishments including:

• inexpensive construction - $0.80 hive box using rough sawmill lumber and bamboo skewer as a top bar
  
• the demanding rhythm of Sam's calendar-driven queen-rearing business by grafting
• SARE grant - emergency queen rearing using Run-Away Splits, Sam's variation on Walk-Away Splits
  

In the absence of a queen, 1) open brood pheromone (versus capped brood) helps retain worker bees in both queen rearing methods (split or grafting) and 2) that new comb is desirable in the Run-Away Split method.

NCSU report compared Sam's 32 mated emergency queens to their database of all tested queens and graded Sam's emergency queens as A- (high reproductive potential).  This dis-spelled my bias that emergency queens mate poorly.