I do not recommend checkerboarding, at least in any of the areas we use. Our climate is too inconsistent in spring for it to be safe.
We have regular problem with new staff here who have learned their practical beekeeping in warmer climes with more stable climates thinking they know better than us and quietly checkerboarding hives against my instructions. They get a sore rump when I see it, and shown the combs of chilled brood they have caused.
Checkerboardig is an extreme form of brood spreading, where between every frame of brood an empty comb is placed to force the pace of broodnest expansion. The version normally practiced is at the point of the bees having almost expanded across the box. A second deep is brought into use, and in the bottom box every second frame is left in place and the alternate frames are replaced by empty combs from the new box. The removed brood is raised up into the second deep and once again interspersed with an empty comb between each bar of brood, and in the opposite pattern to the bottom box..............so the brood frames in the top box are actually directly above the empty frames in the bottom box and vica versa.
Do this in Scotland and immediately get a couple of really cold nights, then the brood in the extremities is in trouble and far from boosting the colony it can set it back badly.
Less extreme, and you can get away with it, is brood spreading, where a comb, maybe two, are inserted in the middle of the nest to provide laying space and make it unneccessary for the bees to move the stores and pollen at the fringe of the nest for expansion. We never ever do it unless they are already at five bars of brood as you do not want to overstretch a small colony's ability to keep the nest warm. Also we never put the two or more new frames together in the middle, always only one and then brood and then another empty if placing more than one.
Bees of an Amm type will frequently sense isolation if two or more bars seperate brood areas and this can sometimes trigger the construction of emergency cells in one part of the hive away from the queen. This can give rise to instability issues as these cells come close to hatching, although they may get torn down by the queen as that part of the nest she has been working in expands to include the isolated part. This very factor is actually used by some queen breeders to get their grafted bars started in queenright colonies (thinking in particular of a system used in black bees territory in France), where a bar of brood and a bar of pollen, plus the frame of grafts, are isolated to one side of the hive behind a barrier made from queen excluder mesh. Apparently works very well, although not all races of bees are receptive to it.
Conclusion is that full scale checkerboarding is NOT ok in our climate, small scale brood spreading is ok. Neither should be practiced until you know what you are doing as any spreading if the colony is still too small is likely to have a negative effect. Brood spreading is also NOT a thing to do in dearths if the colony is not trying to expand laying.
