The bees move the brood nest down in the boxes through the summer, which
is what you saw the first year. They fill the top with honey/pollen, then
move gradually up during the late winter, very early spring. When they get
crowded in the top box, they will tend more toward swarming, despite having
room below. Also, they can starve in a long, cold winter, such as we just
had in the states, when they reach the top, can't move sideways due to cold
and can't reach additional stores. Rotating allows you to move the stores
from sides of bottom to middle (or over brood nest) at the top when you
rotate, without disturbing cluster at all (just move that box to the
bottom).

If you don't think the queen moves upward in spring, just put your honey
supers on without a queen excluder.

-Karen Oland


-----Original Message-----
From: Frank I. Reiter


I couldn't remember why the rotation was done, so I looked up it up and
found the following explanation in one of my books.  It said that the queen
likes to move up as she lays rather than down. By spring, the book says, the
brood nest will be in the upper chamber, and reversing them allows further
movement in an upwards direction, discouraging swarming.

I'm not convinced that this is so, but it seems, from my perspective of
little knowledge and less experience, to conflict with two other things I
have learned.  One is that I started these colonies from nucs, in single
brood boxes.  When I added the second they could have moved the nest up into
it, but they stayed down below, and filled the top brood chamber with honey.

Secondly, I have read that left to their own devices (IE in the wild) the
bees will move the nest downwards starting at the top and filling in with
honey behind the nest.