> If a hive with a small number of bees has sufficient stores-pollen
> and honey, to feed brood, will transition to foraging be suppressed
> to meet the needs of the brood because of the total number of bees?

By "suppressed" I assume you mean delayed, for specific individual
bees sufficient to care for the larvae and brood, but never completely
suppressed.

There are a number of trade-offs going on in a colony all the time that
make a "yes/no" answer to the question impossible.  (These are not
really "decisions" as much as they are the net outcome of the
seemingly random efforts of the bees in any one colony).

If someone insisted on a one-word answer, I'd lean more towards
"no" than "yes", for the following reasons:

If nothing else, some number of foragers will be gathering water
whenever possible, even if abundant stores of honey and pollen exist.
This must happen, even if water-gathering means that eggs, larvae,
and brood go untended, and die.  Future bees cannot take priority
over current bees, since the brood certainly dies if most of the nurse
bees die of dehydration.  (Water may be a special case, simply
because it is not stored by bees for "long-term storage".)

The question might be rephrased as "Is nectar more "labor intensive"
than honey to use in preparation of food for larvae and worker bees?"
To use honey, they must uncap cells, and dilute the honey with water,
but the water itself must be available and gathered.  To use nectar,
forager bees must gather the nectar.  Clearly, if new nectar is not
coming in, and there are no uncapped cells of nectar to use, the
bees will start uncapping sealed honey.  Given all the effort required
to evaporate nectar into honey, I'd conclude that nectar would be
"preferred" over honey in all cases where there is a choice between
the two.  Use of nectar reduces demand for water, which is an added
plus for nectar.

Colonies never really stop foraging, as long as flight is possible.
Some foragers fly sorties to "unexplored" areas in hope of finding better
sources of nectar and pollen even when excellent sources have been
found and are being exploited by other foragers.  (The "best" nectar
source could dry up in a matter of hours, since some of the best nectar
plants provide nectar only at specific times of day and temps, so the effect
of such apparently wasteful searching is to "hedge the colony's bets", and
allow foraging efforts to be refocused in a very nimble manner when a good
source "dries up".)

Tom Seeley wrote an entire book that goes into great detail on foraging issues
for several chapters.  "The Wisdom of the Hive" is the title, and it is worth every
penny of the steep price charged.
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/SEEWIS.html

Sorry to make the issue so complex, but it really is complex.  All these
sorts of questions are multi-variable problems, and the number of appropriate
variables to consider change with the season and current weather.

        jim