checkerboarding and frames with foundation

[DRAKOS]

I want to expand the brood nest of my three hives, and I am wondering if checkerboarding works with frames with undrawn foundation, or only with empty frames.

[Vance G]

Those frames of foundation can play a valuable role in keeping underemployed nurse bees from sitting around plotting to swarm. They also get drawn very neatly and completely. It serves the same general purpose but is not technically the same.

[DRAKOS]

Thanks for the reply
You mean that I can not put the undrawn frames, among the brood frames? So I have to put them next to the last brood frame?

[psfred]

It's only March, and we could easily get cold weather again, at least where I live, so I'm hesitant to insert much extra space into the brood nest unless there enough bees to fill that space immediately. If you get a cold snap, the bees will abandon the brood outside what the cluster will cover and it will die. Most importantly, the drones will be left to die, and then they will make drone comb in that empty frame instead of brood comb.

Foundation is probably a better choice at the moment, although that depends on your particular forecast.

If you think you will have warm enough weather for the bees to be flying every day and not clustering at night, you can put a foundationless frame in the brood nest if you have enough bees to immediatly draw it out and you have white wax in the hive. I'm putting empty frames at the edge of the brood nest in my hive, I don't trust the weather to stay warm all that long right now, and until another round of brood emerges there aren't enough bees to my mind.

Peter

[Vance G]

Hey Pete, it is probably pretty warm in the mediterrainian now. They are south of Florida I think in Greece

[psfred]

You're right, I missed the Greece part of the address. It's been a hectic day.

So long as there are enough bees to quickly draw comb in the foundationless frame it's fine to put one in. If there isn't a good honey flow, though, my limited experience is that they draw a partial frame of drone comb if they are not in expansion mode, which you then have to deal with since it's in the middle of the brood nest.

Still, the mountains in Greece are still fairly cool, I'd bet.

Peter