Walt Wright Articles

[iddee]

http://www.knology.net/~k4vb/all%20walt%20articles.htm

[tecumseh]

you are hurting me here Iddee!  :'(

[iddee]

In what way? I thought you had read them at least twice.

[tecumseh]

I have likely read my old copy of abc/xyz about half a dozen times from cover to cover... but then again there is some really worth while information in that book. 

[brooksbeefarm]

I remember the checker boarding war on another forum a few years back with Walt Wright. I think the both of you were on that forum at the time?? Jack

[tecumseh]

yea Jack but I am the one who got tossed in the process for simply asking question Walt didn't want to consider or answer.  some places and folks simply have 'the feel' of a cult.... whereby all the followers bow down to some idol. 

truthfully I didn't pay much attention to 'uncle walt' (now ain't that a precious name) checkerboarding non sense until he started making claims for it being a cure for CCD (which at the time no one knew what that even was... I guess still do not).

[brooksbeefarm]

I don't think he is the father of checkerboarding,Beeks have been moving frames around for one reason or another for a very long time, my self for one, before i ever heard of Walt Wright He has some good points, but when you think you have the bees figured out, they will make fool out of you. And i should know. Jack

[LazyBkpr]

He has some good points, but when you think you have the bees figured out, they will make fool out of you. And i should know. Jack

  isnt that the truth?  Like being married or hunting a hound in competition hunts..
  Bag your dog up all night, and he brings a possum and lays it on your feet while the judge watches.......... :'(

[Woody Roberts]

Bees are just like horses or hunting dogs. They'll make a liar out of you.

[minz]

I think we are about the same here as Walt for elevation, mountains and 8b growing. I tried some Checker boarding. Matter of fact still have that experiment running.  I mention it because the big theory is that the queen prefers the deep over the shallows and will pretty much stay down there. Well I cannot convince her of that! I have started to push her down with an excluder. I have 8 frames of empty deep, 2 full shallows of brood, and one super that they will not draw (went with a shallow to ‘bait’ them up.  Oh and the hive swarmed last year the exact same  time as the other one I had in a different yard.  It seems that I run out of deep hive bodies before shallows so I just leave that experiment. Since all the brood is in shallows I cannot even break her down and feed my nucs (so again it sits there and does not perform).
It is way better to work than this Demaree method I am working this year. Crap that is some lifting!

[tefer2]

I came across a video his daughter made for him explaining the process.
I have never tried his method, so I can't comment how well it works.


Here's another on the pollen box maneuver.

[brooksbeefarm]

Guess i'm a little thick , bees store pollen below and in  the brood nest, why would i want to draw the queen up to lay in the honey supers?? That's the problem i try to avoid now, when the queen lays in the top supers (in my area) they think they are crowded and build queen cells (but not always) and i sure don't want her laying in my honey supers. I must be missing something here??? Jack

[kebee]

 I am with you brooksbeefarm, I know I will not be doing that for I don't want  the queen laying eggs up there, now if he is doing it to just raise bees ok.

Ken

[LogicalBee]

Gee, it all seems so clear now after watching those videos. 

Reminds of a quote from the first president of Israel after a long Atlantic cruise with Albert Einstein in 1921.  Chaim Weizmann said, “Einstein explained his theory to me every day, and on my arrival I was fully convinced that HE understood it."

From reading numerous posts over the years my guess is the key idea behind “checker boarding” is that gaps in a bee hive (bee it brood in the spring, or honey in the summer) tends to keep the bees busy filling those gaps before they start back filling the brood chamber and swarming.  Is that the basic premise of this idea?