At 9:24 AM -0500 01/2/9, Kim Flottum, Editor Bee Culture wrote:
  . . .  let them raise their own queen when they can ... as long as there
are eggs in the queenless half.

        I am glad to see such an authority mentioning with apparent
approval this method of getting a new queen.
        Some important textbooks don't even mention this old method, and
its traditional name could be taken to imply inferiority.
        I mean no offence to those who sell queens resulting from mass
production by 'grafting' eggs of human choice, but I would like to see
discussion of the relative merits.  Why should we think the bees are less
skillful than we are in choosing the best egg to make a new queen?  Indeed,
how much choice is involved in 'grafting'?  Is there any theoretical reason
to think we can do as well as the bees?  Is a queen freighted from a remote
region likely to be as good as one bred in the local habitat?

        For a decade I had good success with this method:

1  Remove roof; substitute ceiling by one with a few sq in of gauze taped
near the middle (on the vague notion that the scents of that hive will
comfort the split).

2  Put on this a nuc box of 4 frames lifted from the brood box below
containing many eggs, some honey, and preferably some stored pollen  -  and
NOT the queen.

3  Replace roof  :=)

3  After the new queen has settled down to laying, move these 4 frames into
the middle of a full box with foundation both sides and put this new hive
on a baseboard.

4  Move the new hive where you want.

        In my temperate climate at least, it is also possible to use for
the split a whole 9- or 10-frame box from the start, with the 4-frame split
flanked by foundation frames each side, i.e. skip the nuc-box phase.
        I tend to face the split's entry in the same direction as the
parent hive, but cannot say whether this is best.


        After a couple generations of this non-commercial breeding, my bees
achieved net storage over winter, which is I believe unrecorded.  These
same champion workers I would normally rob of a frame or two wearing no
gear at all.  Such a temperament of hard working with placid behaviour must
constitute some evidence for merit in this breeding method.  Let's hear
other evidence.

        I trust the US experts will let us have full criticism of the
Pauper's Split, and can only hope they will stick to the point while doing
so.  This time we know some of them have a commercial interest in the issue
I am raising, whereas previously we could only speculate who might have
held stock in Dow, de Nemours, Monsanto, or other GM corporation.  How to
get new queens is a very important issue, deserving Informed Discussion;
important enough to deserve declarations of interest, don't you agree?  It
may be a minor matter, but let's get it right.  Also of course the
queen-factory operators are more informed than us paupers, so their
mentioning commercial interest will establish them as experts in a sense
that us paupers can't.  This is a further reason why commercial interests
should be mentioned.

        What think ye of the Pauper's Split?
R