North 40 Life Magazine | Page 11

HOW TO WALK-AWAY SPLIT IN THE NORTHWEST Ask a beekeeper about splitting hives and you’ll probably, if you’re lucky and it isn’t bee season, get a whole host of techniques and strategies for the best “splits” of the season. When Drew and I sat down with Jason Waite, co-founder of Harvest Lane Honey and 15 year beekeeping veteran, we wanted to get a little deeper into the bee-splitting game. So rather than asking a simple “how-to,” we went in for the more personal side of things and asked him to tell us his favorite bee-splitting tactic. INTRODUCTIONS TO THE WALK-AWAY SPLIT Last year, when we began stocking Harvest Lane Honey products, we started our own apiary for the company. This included everything that comes with breaking into the “beek” world: intro into antibiotics and varroa mites, brood patties and pollen patties… we got in and got dirty, and it paid off. We were able to harvest over 20 pounds of honey last year… and that brought us to the next phase of the program, the healthy hive split. Q. Drew and I went off and got our own hives this year, so you can imagine the excitement when we got to sit down and talk bees with the Jason of Harvest Lane Honey. We’d done our google 11