Well, I must say that Iām only using one deep Lang brood box & my hives are averaging a hundred kilos of honey per annum without me chasing honey flows. One deep brood box does me.
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Mr Finland, he is Mr Sub-Tropical Australiaā¦ 
We all have different climates, almost as different as our opinionsā¦ Diving for cover now! 
Greetings from parallel 33 
First we need to clarify some terminology. āCheckerboardingā or āNectar Managementā as proposed by Walt Wright (who passed away this last weekā¦) is different than opening the brood nest. Waltās āNectar Managementā only involves the space ABOVE the brood nest and takes place a month or two before it would ever be appropriate to open the brood nest. Watlās scheme involved alternating empty DRAWN comb with capped honey over the brood nest. If your bees winter in the bottom (and mine never do) and you have honey over their heads, you can manipulate this area as early as March in my climate and alternate what you have so it is ācheckerboardedā into capped and empty combs. Walt says this fools them into not swarming as they perceive a lack of stores, though you should have a full box of stores that is now distributed between two boxes and interspersed with empty comb. Assuming you have winter, then basing it on apple blooming is probably good. If you donāt have winter, I donāt see how itās going to help, but perhaps you could do the same thing in whatever season you think is preceding swarm season.
Opening the brood nest is putting empty frames (preferably) in the middle of the brood nest. I would use totally empty frames, NOT drawn comb. To determine if they are strong enough for this, make the gap you intend to fill with the empty frame and see how quickly they fill it with festooning bees. If it quickly fills you could put an empty there. If it does not, then itās too early. Most hives I do one or two of these at a time. Rarely I have a really booming hive where I could actually alternate every other frame, but I would very seldom do that.
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I do this in the Autumn and it works a treat to get an extra frame or two of winter bees.
Good tip about the speed of festooningā¦
Thank you @Michael_Bush - Sometimes clarification is needed as people will only part way explain what to do and I find that entirely frustrating.
When would you checker board for brood? April/May?
I think alternating brood frames with foundationā¦or even combā¦is a dicey thing to do in the UK. We donāt see the enormous flows of nectar here that beekeepers experience in other countries. You risk early queen cells because the brood is separated. It is more difficult for the bees to keep the brood warm enough and you have to have a bursting hive to think of doing this.
Although beekeepers talk about using this as swarm controlā¦there are better methods to use.
I donāt understand why any beekeeper would want to make it more difficult for the bees than it needs to be.
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I would almost never have every other frame empty in a brood nest. I would say never, but thatās always a dangerous thing to sayā¦ I would just put one or two empty frames in one brood box and maybe, if it was strong enough, another one or two in the next brood box and only if they were strong enough. In my location very few would be strong enough before mid May, but an occasional one might be at the end of April. In April we still have frost most every night. In May Iāve seen frost as late as the 15th as recently as last year. Itās pretty hard for a colony to keep the brood warm if there is much empty space in the brood nest. Chilled brood is also the leading cause of chalkbroodā¦
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Because they like to play with their bees, which is fine, as long as they understand how the colony works.
One frame in the middle of a big colony in the autumn does work well, though.
I think if you want an extra box in the UK the best thing would be to put one UNDER and let the bees occupy it as they need it. You will soon find out if they do and you will have a box of honey for their winter stores.
I asked because I know in Oz several beeks used this method for Spring build-up but their weather is more stable and reliable than here I just wondered if people up this end of the world did this method
With my gargantuan hives I place an undrawn super above the third deep brood box. It seems to give the wax makers (10-18 day old bees) a job and acts as an excluder of sorts reducing the chance of the queen crawling across to the drawn supers above. Most hives average 3-6 newly drawn supers per season.
In my dreamsā¦sigh.[quote=āDee, post:33, topic:5071ā]
I think if you want an extra box in the UK the best thing would be to put one UNDER and let the bees occupy it as they need it
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The other thing you can do is wait till they are on a few frames and swap the boxes
Hi Dee, on reflection, the only time I really checkerboard is for swarm control, not to increase the brood. If anyone wants to increase the brood, just add another super of freshly drawn worker comb, especially if it has recently had honey spun out of it.
I have bee hives that urgently needed swarm control, also I have customers wanting me to put bees in their Flow hives but want me to use the wood starter strips in the brood frames. All I had to do was make a decent colony from two of the hives & checkerboard their brood with the Flow brood frames. In two weeks time they should be fully drawn, nice & straight with plenty of brood in them.
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Hi @jape Jarmo, sorry I missed that question a couple of days ago. Iām in a sub-tropical zone of Australia. If you like working your bees 11 months of the year, migrate to here. I think I read somewhere that you are at 60deg.N. Itās too cold up there. Iād get cabin fever, for sure.
Actually if you want to google earth where I am, Iām in Buderim, Qld. Itās nice here most of the year, the only draw back is the heat & humidity like weāre having right now. Anyway Iāll talk to you later, bye
You sound jolly busy, Jeff.
Hi Dee, I have been rather busy. Did you see our lychee barter video? Wilma & I did that yesterday morning. The farmer finished picking the day before, so we got to go through one patch & get all the ones they missed. He showed me how to use his cherry picker, so I had fun on that for a couple of hours.
Heās happy heās getting good pollination, & Iām happy Iāve got a years supply of lychees.
Iām waiting for daylight, Iāve got some more Flow brood frames to checkerboard before it gets too hot. take care, bye