I have a new hive that I started this spring (end of April). Here in Wisconsin we had a very cold and very late spring. It took nearly two months for my bees to build out the 1st brood chamber foundation. It took about three weeks for the bees to build out the 2nd brood chamber. Eight days ago (last Thursday) I added my first super. I inspected the bees tonight and here's what I found: the super foundation is roughly half built out--all the frames have been started, but nothing is built out all the way. I would expect that in a week, it will be time to add super number two. What has been started and is deep enough appears to be holding honey (or what will become honey once it's reduced). The 2nd brood chamber seems to have quite a bit of honey in it. The honey that is sealed is on the upper, outer rim of the frames as you would expect. There are a couple of frames in this deep with some sealed brood, and a few frames with uncapped larvae (that's probably only a few days old). The remaining cells in the 2nd brood chamber have uncapped honey. I did not inspect all the way down to the 1st brood chamber. I did not see any swarm cells. My question is: will the bees move the honey up to the super? Obviously since the honey needs to be reduced, it takes more room to dry the honey than it does to store the capped honey. As the honey in the 2nd deep is condensed, will they move it up? Or will they keep adding to it and seal it? Based on what I saw, if all the open cells in the 2nd deep containing honey are capped, the queen won't have any room to lay. But it does seem late in the year for the bees to swarm, doesn't it? Maybe the bees don't know that though. Also, should I investigate the 1st brood chamber tomorrow/Sunday?
[But it does seem late in the year for the bees to swarm, doesn't it? ]
Never assume the bees aren't capable of doing something, they certainly will do it just to prove you wrong.
I try to manage my brood area in such a way that I keep frames with mostly honey only in the outer most two frame positions. Then I 'try' to keep the center brood with a frame to be drawn or in the process of being drawn - this assures a degree of open space in the brood nest. Everything else full of honey gets moved above an excluder or honey dome (I run all mediums for this reason).
Having deeps may complicate the circumstance. In such case, one may have to add another deep body to the brood chamber. I would keep the brood to the center of the box and honey to the box edge and an empty frame or two between both areas. I would try to equalize this pattern between boxes.
A better option would be to extract the brood frames if they are mostly nectar and feed the output back to the hive (this can cause robbing if not done in a feeder or at a good distance from the hive). Once extracted, your bees will likely clean the frames and ready them for brood use instead of nectar storage as with will now have the new area you supplied above. This is better because you do not induce stress to draw brood comb instead of super comb and it motivates them to utilize the super space. Again this is most humane if there is minimal or no brood in the frames.
Keep in mind this may slow the drawing of your super frames now, but it will benefit you with a larger hive population for a better fall flow later.
Your bees will eventually move the nectar from the brood nest to the supers. This depends on a lot of conditions. The foremost being drawn comb in which to place the refugee nectar. Bees are frugal with energy. If the nectar is mostly cured, they may cap it in place rather then using excess energy to move it. Eventually even capped stores are moved to the honey stores area. I doubt it is late enough in the season for your bees to leave it in place for the winter - but I warned you about doubting anything.
[Am I Honey Bound?]
The short answer is:
If your queen does not have adequate comb in which to lay because it contains nectar, then yes you are nectar bound.
If your queen does not have adequate comb in which to lay because it contains capped honey, then yes you are honey bound.
It is much easier to be nectar bound instead of honey bound because of the area needed to cure nectar to become honey.
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Those are your options, I hope that helps!
-Jeff
I cure the nectar or honey bound situation by supering and pulling some of the frames up into the super and putting a mixture of drawn comb (for the queen) and new frames to force them to draw new comb. The empty comb gives the queen a place to lay and consume some of the honey in brood rearing and the empty frames makes the bees build new comb for more storage. A win win.