Hello,

I have checked into some of the links offered in a previous post to me. 
Checkerboarding to me seems that it will be easier for me to deal with 
my colonies. Especially since I deal and capture swarms from my own 
yard. If my out yards swarm, then I haven't yet seen the evidence of the 
act. Making splits have been my way of attempting to prevent swarms and 
expand my colonies. But this has always negatively affected my yields.

After reading the article at:   http://www.bwrangler.com/lche.htm  I  
have realized that this is a very useful technique and not as disruptive 
as it sounds. Drawn comb is placed at the ENDS of the brood NOT in it's 
midst. and two supers above this brood has alternating frames of stored 
honey and empty comb or foundation. It is no more work than... No, it 
appears to be less work than going thru each frame looking for queen 
cells and/or reversing brood bodies.

I have never gotten good yields on my colonies. Some is probably because 
of location. Some is probably because of weak colonies or new splits. 
Some is probably because of not monitoring the bloom cycles until this 
year to suddenly realize that I may have not been placing supers on 
early enough.

But I want to try checkerboarding next year. Yes, along with relocating 
my home yard and one out yard, along with earlier supering, and while 
still expanding the number of colonies managed with Northern (USA) bred 
queens.

Remember how long it took for Langstroth style equipment took to become 
standard. It was 70 or 80 years. And how long did it take for beekeepers 
to understand that bees mate in the flight and a few more decades to 
know that the queen mated with multiple drones?

Though I am near retirement, but still a young beekeeper of 4 1/2 years, 
I think this technique deserves a a good study and a trial run by all 
beekeepers. It would be a worthy project for bee clubs to trial.

Thanks for the help with finding the info on this intriguing topic.

Alf Bashore

> I think /the/ questions and skepticism are valid, and 99% of the people I talk to are just as reluctant to checkerboard.  They tell me it just doesn't seem natural and seems to violate everything the bees would do on their own.  
>  
> /It is/ somewhat ironic how checkerboarding takes on the heightened nuance of a moral issue (manipulating the brood nest) when most of what we do in the normal course of beekeeping is really for our benefit of pushing the bees to greater levels of production than if we left them in the hollow of a tree.

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