>>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).
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>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.
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>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.

This is a situation that the Western Australian beekeepers have, I am 
led to believe. They do get massive pollen flows.

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>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.
I agree with most of what Trevor has said, but I am not sure about the 
bees moving honey up. They may if you jam a full frame of honey in the 
middle of the brood and build up is in full throttle. It 'seems' to me 
that in the normal course of build the bees use the nearby honey and put 
the incoming honey in the super. The main reason for suggesting that is 
we see these days a surge of AFB in the spring. The logic is that they 
are eating the old honey that would have been stored around the brood 
after we move to honey. One thing about Australia is that it is possible 
on occasion to have spring like build at any time of the year.

They only chew along the wire in the brood nest if there is no nectar 
coming in.

Geoff Manning

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