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> Some beekeepers ... routinely 'switch hive bodies,' that is, switch the positions of the two stories of each hive, thinking that this will induce the queen to increase her egg laying and distribute it more widely through the hive. I doubt, however, that any such result is accomplished ... I have long since found that such planning is best left to the bees

Having read this, I had to comment. As has been stated here often and needs to be, beekeeping is regional, meaning different areas require different management, but different management and goals also require different management. For us in Northern Alberta, we strongly believe in reversal of brood boxes once or twice every spring, lots of work, 
you bet. We only run two story broodnests now, but for may years it was three broods, with the same amount of reversals, we noticed our stock had changed and wasn’t utilizing the three broods as we wanted, so we stopped.   But the colony growth that it inspires is quite amazing. We have a very short flow period and we need the colonies at full strength as soon as possible, this accomplishes that. To the level that we often have extractable spring honey, while we feed sometimes in the spring, we are not a feed lot. Strong hives will capitalize on all bloom, weak ones will not. We always see two + boxes full of brood in the spring, I don’t know how I could contain the queen to one brood box.
We only run our colonies for honey production, no secondary pollination moving. Reversing also works well for us in making splits, as we only do full super splits, we don’t just pull frames. We find the queen in every one, as we have found we are replacing our queens every year anyway, it’s not a problem finding them for splitting as well.
Now I have to clarify after this long winded explanation, that there are beekeepers in Alberta that do not reverse and there are beekeepers running single broods, and I would believe they are successful doing it or would stop. Both are not practises I would recommend to new beekeepers in our location, as there is a great deal of knowledge required to do it successfully.

I would also like to comment on the top hole discussion, as we use one inch auger holes under our handhold in the top box, our climate is cold and dry and we use an insulated lid but not side insulation. I do believe our bees eat more over winter, but our population are also greater in the spring. I have never felt the bees were losing heat out of the top hole, but we do use a wind deflector on it to keep the wind from blowing in directly also keeps the sun out which can stimulate the bees to fly when they probably should’t. 

I always enjoy hearing all the different way we can all be successful, but I can only imagine how confusing this can be to new beekeepers.
Tim Townsend
Stony Plain Alberta

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