  Aim: The aim of the paper is to understand the emission from the photon
dominated regions in Cepheus B, estimate the column densities of neutral carbon
in bulk of the gas in Cepheus B and to derive constraints on the factors which
determine the abundance of neutral carbon relative to CO. Methods: This paper
presents 15'x15' fully sampled maps of CI at 492 GHz and 12CO 4-3 observed with
KOSMA at 1' resolution. The new observations have been combined with the FCRAO
12CO 1-0, IRAM-30m 13CO 2-1 and C18O 1-0 data, and far-infrared continuum data
from HIRES/IRAS. The KOSMA-tau spherical PDR model has been used to understand
the CI and CO emission from the PDRs in Cepheus B and to explain the observed
variation of the relative abundances of both C^0 and CO. Results: The emission
from the PDR associated with Cepheus B is primarily at V_LSR between -14 and
-11 km s^-1. We estimate about 23% of the observed CII emission from the
molecular hotspot is due to the ionized gas in the HII region. Over bulk of the
material the C^0 column density does not change significantly, (2.0+-1.4)x10^17
cm^-2, although the CO column density changes by an order of magnitude. The
observed \cbyco abundance ratio varies between 0.06 and 4 in Cepheus B. We find
an anti-correlation of the observed C/CO abundance ratio with the observed
hydrogen column density, which holds even when all previous observations
providing C/CO ratios are included. Here we show that this observed variation
of C/CO abundance with total column density can be explained only by clumpy
PDRs consisting of an ensemble of clumps. At high H2 column densities high mass
clumps, which exhibit low C/CO abundance, dominate, while at low column
densities, low mass clumps with high C/CO abundance dominate.
