> Adding a brood chamber either above or below, is generally described as "adding a brood chamber", not "supering".

Following this line of thought, there is the fairly common practice around these parts, of reversing the brood chambers in spring when the colony is still in two stories.  During the first twenty years of my beekeeping experience, I lived in California, where most (if not all) hives have the bottoms nailed on, so this so-called reversing was never done. 

If a box was added, it was added above. By the way, the distinction between brood boxes and supers was not particularly clear back then. We called them bee boxes and the sometimes had both honey and brood in them. Queen excluders were rare among the beekeepers I knew. 

Every spring the murmur goes out "is it time to reverse?" I rarely do it, and find that the colony expands downward when they need the room. I worry more about the disorganization of the brood nest that occurs when you split the two brood boxes and swap positions. Why fuss with them?

The discussion of whether to top super or under super, comes up often. Many beekeepers insist on putting empty boxes under full, claiming to get more honey and discourage swarming by so doing. Of course, with no excluder, this is an invitation for the queen to move into the super. 

What I usually did was to put the empties on top. In my area, swarming wasn't much trouble, since the spring buildup is slow and steady from January on, rather than a sudden rush like we have here in the North East USA, which often leads to swarming. Occasionally a hive would get honey bound, but that would be remedied easiest by taking the honey off. 

With fewer hives to look after, I generally take the hives apart regularly. And when I do, I tend to move the capped honey to the top, and put the empties under. But this is just to make it easier to get the honey off when it's ready. Nice to have the oldest honey on top at that point. 

I never thought it hurts much just to add an empty super, but then -- it wouldn't occur to me to put one on if the weather is still seriously cold. Pretty much I leave them alone until they actually need the space. I realize large scale operators cannot afford to wait and see, and often super everything at once, to get the job done in a timely manner. 

I would be interested to see some evidence that supers placed on too early causes harm, I don't know of any.  That isn't to say I disagree, but i do admit to being skeptical that anyone really understands heat dynamics in the honey bee colony. Another thing that I doubt is that bees "get discouraged" if you add a bunch of supers at once.

PLB

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