Checkerboarding CBing Bee keeping Need Know

Honey bees basically have an instinct to reproduce. At a certain time the instinct for the colony to reproduce switches to a survival instinct.  When the colony meets certain criteria we begin to see signs that the colony is going to throw a reproduction swarm. One sign is the backfilling of the brood chamber during an early nectar flow season. This is often accompanied by an overhead band of solid chamber that honey bounds the queen and restricts her from laying and therefore restricts the colony from expanding. The bees begin to backfill the brood chamber to stop the queen from laying. Her body size shrinks, she gets her flight figure back and she goes airborne with half your honey gathers. The trick is to employ a method to keep from losing half you colony to the trees and keep your foraging force. The idea is to break that overhead band of honey and fool the bees into thinking there is no ceiling on the honey cavity.  Beekeepers employ numerous principles/systems to try and achieve this goal.

 CBing How It's Done

Walts explanation of the hows and whys of the colony can sometimes get a little much for this peas size brain. They are good to know and understand as we strive to understand bees and our relationship to them and nature, but this understanding is not needed to place the CB system in motion.

Some Facts On CBing

It is very time dependent. You need to know when white was appears in your area. Most say this is the signal of the main flow. Walt has other perceptions of white wax but says is it a good marker on when to time your CB manipulation. Count back 8wks from white wax. This will be when you manipulate (CB) your colony. You may manipulate earlier and it does not matter but it is crucial not to be late. White wax for my area is the first to second week of April time frame. So I am Cbing in the first too second week of February or earlier.

You have to have a super of Brood depth drawn comb. It has to be drawn comb and not foundation as the bees will see the foundation as a wall or honey block. After white wax the bees will have the ability to draw comb and you can super with foundation. Until you see white wax all supering must be done with drawn comb.

You do not worry about CB brood frames. In no way does CBing involve the manipulations of brood nest. That is what makes the swarm control method so sweet. No moving all those supers to check for queen cells and open the brood nest. This is where a lot of beeks err with the system. They create their own system and then blame the system when they have swarms.

You start with a deep of brood and at least one shallow of honey and a shallow of drawn comb. You checkerboard the honey and drawn comb and place a shallow of drawn comb on top of that and you are done.  Of course this is on top of the brood chamber. How much simpler can you get? You then stay two supers ahead to coax the bees into thinking there is no overhead ceiling. What I mean by two supers. When you see nectar in the super below the top one add another super. Remember drawn comb until white wax then foundation is OK.

It will then look like this:

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When you see nectar in the third row from the bottom in an empty frame add another super of most likely drawn comb.

This should be enough to get you started and for many the timing is now. More tools wholesale from Hefei Better Technology Co., Ltd