For those of you who remember, May 2013 I bought a shake of bees and dropped them in my homemade, cedar, TB hive. They left, I caught them, they left, I caught them again. After putting a queen excluder over the entrance they stayed. Once I saw brood, I removed the excluder. They swarmed in September. I caught the swarm, and now have two hives...both doing great. So...this Spring after noticing ALOT of ladies and drones, I gave the bees the final 3rd of the hive, 29 bars total, about 4 feet long, 19" bars. A couple of weeks later, still lots of bees just hanging out in the empty last 3rd...still LOTS of drones. Afraid of a swarm, I went in today expecting to add an empty bar in the brood, and maybe grab a bar of honey. What I found was this... As I worked my way from the start of the comb, about bar 18, (entrance is at bar 1) I found honey on top...brood on bottom. Looks great, but I wasnt expecting that that deep into the hive. As I continued through bars 17, 16, 15.... to 12....same thing...nice rainbow of honey and brood. Bar 11 looked to be only drone cells....HUGE cells. I stopped at bar 9 and didnt go into 1 - 8 bars. (If I remember right, bars 7 and 8 were honey that I left for winter.) I didnt see any queen cells. So (thanks for hanging in!!!), should I just leave them alone and hope they start making honey bars? Is this typical for brood that deep, or is this a sign of a swarm on the horizon? Is a split in order? Should I inspect bars 1-8? Thanks for the info....hope everyone is having an awesome year.