Walt Wright is a member of our local beekeeping association.  He did a live
demonstration of checkerboarding in our association's apiary back in 2005.
It lasted from late winter through honey harvest.  His total swarm control
package includes much more than checkerboarding, however checkerboarding
plays a very major role.   The checkerboarding part is quiet simple and not
that labor intensive or time consuming.

The checkerboarding part of his demonstration involved 2 production supers,
one with honey in all frames and one with drawn, empty comb.  He mixed the
two such that every other frame had honey and the ones between had only
drawn, empty combs.  He did this in both supers, staggered so that when
placed back on the hive each empty frame had a full frame above it.  If you
were to remove the front of the hive, the full and empty frames would
resemble a checkerboard.

There seems to be some discrepancy in what I am reading here on BEE-L and
what I saw Walt do in our demonstration.   He manipulated no brood frames
within the brood chamber.  He only checkerboarded supers above the cluster.

Walt has written a lot of articles (approx 40) on various beekeeping topics.
Some of those may have involved manipulating frames of brood but I did not
see it happen in our demonstration.

Bob Fanning
North Alabama USA

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