arrange brood

I should know this after several years of beekeeping, but I'm afraid that I have to plead ignorance. It's getting towards the end of the abundant nectar season here in central Wisconsin (late August), and I'm wondering how to arrange my hive boxes (particlularly the brood boxes) in preparation...

I am sure the answer to this is somewhere within the confines of beesource, but when I do a search I get so much stuff returned that it could take weeks to do all the reading.... So....sorry if I am redundant in my questions! I have a hive with 4 eight-frame mediums that I checkerboarded about...

In my last hive inspection the brood were scattered up and down 6 boxes of my 8-fr mediums, usually in pairs - the inner 2 frames of the 8 would be brood. I've been trying to lose 2 of those boxes to get it down to the equivalent of 4 mediums. I know capped honey should go on the outside. It's...