Why backfilling broodnest w/plenty overhead?

[lakebilly]

I have quite a few colonies that have had 1 & 2 honey supers on for weeks & they are backfilling the broodnest & partly ignoring the drawn comb overhead. Some filled a cpl of supers & now are backfilling. I am a bit confused as to what I should do.

I am considering an empty deep10 between supers on some, splitting, empty frames alternated in top deep.

Got 22 starter colonies busting out, soon to transfer to full size & too many colonies w/aformentioned condition, & I work full time. I need to do something in the right direction. thanks for suggestions.

[JRG13]

Sometimes backfilling is a prelude to swarming. It seems like they have enough space, just not motivated to move up. Are the full supers still on? If so, I would put the new boxes under them. Sometimes backfilling is just a prep to fill the frames with brood as well and they'll move stores when the queen starts laying. Other thing you could do is move the stores up and put the empty frames down in the brood box so the queen can fill em with eggs. I had the same concern with some new frames in my brood boxes but it went from small patch of eggs and a small patch of young larvae and surrounded by stores to a fully capped frame of brood in 10 days or so.

[honeyshack]

sounds like one of two things. Either they are not strong enough to move up or needing some coaxing to move up. Move a frame of capped brood up into the super.
If you are using an excluder, they need to be busting at the seams for it to work and a frame moved up to coax them through the excluder
The other thing might be a slow flow. A few days flying here, bad weather, a few days there.

[lakebilly]

I didn't see any swarm cells in the one box I checked (it was a swarm 5 weeks ago). I checked this box a week ago, top deep had three really full frames of capped brood & now is just humming w/ foragers.
I thought possibly that they were prepping for brood, most all frames from center back are all nectar in top deep.

I have 13 swarms & one has swarmed again (filled two deeps & is crankin)

I don't use excluders.

I would say we are in a slow flow. Not sure how that would cause the backfilling?

Supers are still on. Got 40 boxes to inspect. I think that I will put empty supers under full supers along w/ some sort of full empty supers, frames etc. Kind of overwhelmed with the prospect of opening up that many colonies for that much work. I am sure at least 18-20 issued swarms this year that I didn't catch. I have to assemble a lot of frames after work for this.

[Ricky Bee]

As the flow winds down, they reduce the size of the brood nest and back fill with honey. This reduces the size of the population and conserves stores during the summer dearth. I have observed this happening to my hives just over the last week. I had two deeps, a medium and two shallows with no queen excluder. The two deeps and the four middle frames of the medium were filled with brood. The outer frames of the medium and the first shallow were full of capped honey. They are working on drawing and filling the upper shallow. Over the last week, the brood in the medium has all hatched out, and is now being back filled (not capped yet) with honey. At the rate they're going now (strong clover flow), my expectation is that it will all be capped within the next week.

[lakebilly]

I am going to check for swarm cells on some colonies, take nuc boxes w/me. I think I will take D10's w/ empty frames, move any brood frames into empty w/frames in 2nd box & move nectar filled deep above. =3 deeps & medium honey supers. Really don't want to deal w/more swarms. 5 of 10 frames in 1 box were filled w/nectar.

Would you think that they would just slow down? That is, if there are no cells.