>I'm surprised that any Aussie beekeepers haven't answered.  If you restrict the queen to a single brood chamber, with supers of drawn comb above, the workers will maintain an arc of open cells above the broodnest (and above the excluder), in preparation for the queen to lay (so long as the hive doesn't plug out with honey).

That is our experience here in Australia.  It usually is only in the immediate super above the brood nest.  The third super is usually filled.  So that is why we under super and not over super.  When you take the third box off and lift the second and under super, the bees then fill those open cells.

When working certain species e.g. spotted gum, the bees also place lot of pollen in the second box.  Obviously not enough room in the bottom but spotted gum does give copious quantities of pollen compared to other species.

I have found that bees will move honey up.  One way I rotated combs out of the bottom is to have them drawn in the second super then put them down when  almost fully drawn.  They had honey in them.  The bees would move that honey out, presume upwards, and the queen would start laying.  Why I used the second super is that I found that often putting foundation down in the brood chamber the bees will chew out along the wires and then put drone comb there or worse still the foundation will collapse.  For some reason putting them in the second super, above the excluder, the bees draw then out without chewing along the wire.

Trevor Weatherhead
Australia

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