I think some of the conflicting information comes from personal beliefs and not from controlled experiments. Having said that this is my own personal belief. There is little difference in reversing the boxes vs. adding a super on top. The only difference is before the bees had to travel through an empty brood box to get to the colony. Now, the colony is there when they enter and they have room to expand upwards.

I've had senior beekeepers tell me, "Leave it alone, the bees know what they're doing". I reversed them anyway and both boxes were full of brood in less than a month. Otherwise, they probably would have swarmed if I didn't add an additional super on top so I ask, what's the difference?

I've never had a problem or setback with any colony by reversing the boxes.

 

Of course, this might not apply to someone in cooler climes, particularily with a screened bottom board? I started seeing much more of the 'empty ground floor apartments' syndrome, when i switched to SBB's. I've also been leaving them wide open year round (in VA at 1300' elev). I might reconsider that strategy...

 

If you have very strong hive they can handle any gaps you make in the brood nest. If you have a weak hive they will stress out trying to maintain the heat of the brood nest if you make a lot of gaps in it. It all has to do with the strength of the hive at the time.

 

Would you do this (follow pattern of framing bbebbe...) only during a strong flow?

 

What Michael says has merit - but you can expand his idea further with geography, time of year and strength of flow. A small colony with say three frames of brood will not deal well with those three frames being split apart. Now if it is April in the Boston area, I would make sure that those brood frames were in the bottom box. (do a reversal) In June in the Boston area I'd be looking to requeen or consolidate the hive into a single 5 frame nuc box and hope that the smaller space would help them recover.

The not splitting the brood nest rule is pretty much hard and fast right after winter, and becomes less of a big deal the warmer it gets. The larger the bee population the better able they are to adequately cover the brood and so can bridge the new frame that has been added to break the brood nest up. If possible you never want to break the brood nest with foundation - even in a strong flow - for it gets treated as a wall and not an area for the brood nest to be expanded to. I will sometimes insert a frame of undrawn foundation at one side of the brood nest - but not on both - especially if there is a flow on and I'm confident it will get quickly drawn out.

 

>Would you do this (follow pattern of framing bbebbe...) only during a strong flow?

Well, as Andrew pointed out there is the whole context of the time of year etc, but the flow has less to do with it than the strength of the hive. In a moderately strong hive I would have no problem putting one empty frame in a brood nest. More than one would require a strong hive.