Only the first few LED's.. sometimes

I've been reading around and no idea if thise is down the right path but

My WS2812B are only 3 wires. Many others that have used the ESP8266 have used a 4-wire with CLK. SOmething about bit banging and SPI. Frankly I don't really understand it.

Is there anything I can do to leverage these ESP8266 that I have. I really want to use these as I can connect to Wifi and use MQTT to control the lights.