I hived a neighbors swarm in early July into a super (all I had at the time).
Queen quickly filled this with brood, and workers put in thin bands of stores.
Wanted to transition them into deeps, so I eventually moved queen into a deep and put queen excluder under super full of brood.
Queen went to town big time with brood in hive bodies (now at 2 deeps) and I have had to feed some as they had little to no stores or even open nectar in the hive.
Now I would like my super back and would like them to get stores going more in the deeps.
What about putting the super, now with sugar/nectar/capped honey in it below the supers with queen excluder above it so they move the stores up into the deeps?
I think I recently saw this mentioned as a possible option.
My other option is to extract the super and feed it back to them (have had feeder on this hive too long to consider it honey). Or least desirable option is to leave the super on all winter, as I would prefer to keep them in just 2 deeps, plus I figure it won't be the most useful stores if I leave a queen excluder on there, but if I remove it I don't doubt that this queen will build brood in there again come spring.
thanks for input
they'll move the uncapped stuff, but not the capped. you would probably do better extracting and feeding it back if you want your super back.
Good reason to go with all mediums and no excluder. :-D
If you do leave the super on with the winter stores then you will need to remove the excluder so that the queen can move around.
Remember that the drones need to have cleansing flights too, even if there aren't many this time of year for you. You don't want the excluder between them and the entrance.
Scott