Preparing for winter

[Coon]

I know this is in alot of other threads but i just want to do this right when i open up my hives this weekend.

I have 2 hives. One with 2 deeps and one with 3 deeps.

Am i supposed to go into both of them, move all of the brood to the bottom
deep and the capped honey into the second deep and uncapped honey into the third deep?

I just have read alot about the hive not moving downwards during the winter and i dont want them to starve.

What does my hive need to look like going into winter?

[JOHNYOGA2]

Coon,
Bees are pretty amazing little beasts.
If I was feeding during the run up to winter, I would let them do the moving. After all, if your hive was a tree trunk, it wouldn't be manipulated. They will likely backfill and drive the queen down on their own.

[bnatural]

As JOGA wrote, they pretty much take care of themselves. If you want to check, take off the inner cover and look down between the frames on the top deep. You will probably see all capped honey. If you can't tell, pull one frame from the end, then slide the others over and look down at one of the middle frames. It will probably be all honey, or mostly honey with just a little capped brood left at the bottom. If you see that, then you know they are moving the queen and brood down and backfilling the brood area. You found that out by removing one frame, instead of digging through all the boxes and disrupting the colony.

If, on the other hand, you see frames full of brood in all stages, then it is possible that they managed to block the queen in the upper deep. THEN, you want to check further and, possibly move boxes. But, that will most likely be the exception.

Bill