Lloyd Spear makes lots of good points. However, there is a down side to confining the queen to the bottom super during heavy nectar flows, such as we get in MT on a good year -- although that's not been a problem last few years. When the queen is confined to a bottom box with 9 or even 10 frames, under conditions of a heavy flow, the forager bees will deposit nectar in any open cell in the bottom box, rushing back to the field to get more. At night the workers move the temp stores up. But, this causes the queen to cease or reduce laying. Thus, the brood nest begins to rapidly shrink - every cell that frees up with an emergent adult gets filled with nectar, and the queen is taking a vacation. We've also seen bees tear down partially drawn comb in other parts of the hive and apparently reuse to wax for capping -- essentially moving it from incomplete cells and reusing to finish off cells with ripened nectar/honey. We've seen this in hundreds of hives, measured it. Real surprise to us when we first saw. Jerry :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: -- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/BEE-L for rules, FAQ and other info --- ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::