i'm in NE Ohio, where spring comes on very fast in early March after 5 months no pollen flow or much brood. I run between 10-20 Dadant deeps (8 frames that are 12" tall and 1 Langstroth deep frame). My Dadant deep is as tall as 2 mediums. I also run a handful of single Langstroth deeps. One frame = both sides.
I can get 6 capped shallow supers of honey over the season from one hive, with a good spring flow and no surprise queen issues like swarming or surprise poor management on my part. I undersuper and harvest on a rolling basis. Starting May 1st, I will have 4 supers above the brood box (which means 3 shallow supers for honey, 1 for brood, as you'll see below). The bees need all that room to reduce overcrowding. Starting in early or mid June, they only need 3 supers and the single brood box (either size) to hold their population comfortably.
When using a single deep as the brood chamber in early summer, AND with adding wet supers/stickies, I have seen the queen fill 7-8 frames with 70%-90% brood (outermost brood frames have less). I'm estimating this by considering the position of the first frame I find with any brood (frame 2 of 9), and assuming the brood nest is symmetrical, so if frame 1 has stores, and frame 2 has 70% brood, frame 8 will look like frame 2, and frame 9 will look like frame 1. The first frame with eggs will vary in position between frames 2 and 4, but I don't have to dig deeper than that when the hive is queenright.
When using the Dadant deep as the only brood box in summer, with all the wet supers/stickies that the hive can fill with bees (then later honey, one hopes), I have generally only seen 75% of the Dadant frames filled, with more consistency in brood size from middle to outer frames. I was worried about reducing the number of eggs laid by the queen if I used just a single deep Langstroth in summer, which is why I went with the Dadant deep for most of my hives, but now that I have run both systems in parallel for 2 summers, I have not seen evidence of a significantly reduced honey production using singles as deeps instead of Dadant deeps. It is possibly I just didn't notice a 10-20% or so drop in productivity with the single Langstroth deep vs the Dadant deep, but I like the peace of mind.
Any single brood box - Dadant deep or Langstroth deep - gets a super in fall with honey, and in spring I let the queen lay that up as she pleases.
In spring, there will be brood in that super, and brood in the bigger box below. Because I'm now in a hurry with too many hives, I have not taken good enough note of just how much brood is in each box - my best guess is there is more brood in spring than in summer, maybe even 25% more, but I could be overestimating that.
I will have to add 1-2 stickies/wet supers in mid March with the Dadant or Langstroth deep+super overwintering system, which will go above a queen excluder, just to hold the bee population. If I was running double deeps, I would be able to wait until later to add the wet supers/stickies, but still, once I see 80% of a box full of bees, and see brood below - better give them 2 supers for holding the bees, even if nectar flow is several weeks away.
I really like using a single brood box in summer, either a Langstroth deep or a Dadant deep - just the outer 2 frames in that box tell me everything necessary about the state of the queen. If frame 3 (exposed when pulling frame 2) doesn't have brood, then I have a problem. If frames 2 or 3 have brood, then I'm done! Though if frame 2 NEVER has brood even if frame 3 does, then SHE's done.... generally indicates a subpar queen.
I really like using 2 boxes for fall/winter/spring, because it is a nice honey cushion, and it is a nice schedule cushion in Spring so I don't have to add stickies as soon as possible. And I use the 2 boxes for swarm control, see below for details.
For the record, I have had success overwintering colonies with just the honey/space in a Dadant deep with 10 frames. They reliably end up with frames 2-5 covered with bees as a winter cluster, and 6-10 as honey. It's unnerving after seeing the centered Langstroth clusters... This requires great care in checking fall honey stores, and so I prefer to just leave a super of honey and take less care in checking in fall.
TL; DR below for swarm control a la Trish:
I use the honey super as part of the brood chamber in spring for swarm control. I can't have any swarming, so I remove the queen when she has laid the boxes up to max capacity. I want to leave one queen cell at that time, so I don't have to go back in to pinch the extras. So... If I want the virgin queen to fly starting May 10th, I put a queen excluder between the Dadant deep and the temporarily-brood super (it has a queen excluder to prevent access to honey supers) at flyday-20 days, so, April 20. Then somewhere between April 24-April 30 (one never knows about the weather in Ohio then), I take the box without queen cells, find the queen (remember up to 9 frames to check, since I run 9 frame brood chamber), put her in a nuc, remove the queen excluder, pop all queen cells in box with queen cells except 1. Leave 2 boxes united until new queen back and laying in 3 weeks.
I really don't like pinching surplus queens which are still good queens but not convenient for me, because then I get some sort of curse and have very bad luck with virgin queens not returning. So I have to find a home for those old girls somewhere when their daughters make it back and are solid...
This requires 2 spare frames per hive (undrawn is OK) to swap into the Dadant deep when removing the queen - 2 of those Dadant deep frames will have to go with the queen in her temp nuc. I have 4 frame nucs for the queen, but since she doesn't have foragers I can get away with not having more than her 2 frames in there - for a little while. It's kind of resource-intensive, but works for me.
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