Ok here goes. Opened one of my double deeps today and found all the brood in the lower deep with the exception of a tiny little bit in the very bottom of 2 frames in the upper. The upper deep is fully packed with capped honey. I had planned on reversing until i found out they apparently had enough stores in the lower deep to winter thru. I fully expected them to be in the upper deep and that the lower would be empty. My thoughts are taking the top deep off and taking the honey and adding another deep with empty drawn comb or maybe a medium with drawn comb and feeding them syrup until the spring flow which i feel will come early this year. I am concerned with swarming seeing as how they have a complete deep honey dome overhead. The queen does have some room to lay right now and there is at least 3 frames of brood with a very good pattern and looking good. What should I do?
easiest thing is the pull some of the honey frames around the brood and replace with empty frames feed the honey back later. less is more when it comes to manipulation. since you have brood in both boxes, give the queen room and see what happens.
Checkerboarding around and above the cluster would be a great way to provide expansion room if you do have another deep's worth of empty frames. Empty frames adjacent to the two with brood in the top box will provide immediate horizontal expansion space, and the checkerboarded space around and above the cluster will provide immediately-available empty frames ready for brood rearing with available feed next to each empty frame. This should help a little in reducing the urge to swarm, but you'll need to continue to check on them to see if they need further expansion space provided.
I also wanted to state that if you have a full deep's worth of honey left on this hive, you really wouldn't need to feed syrup as the necessary feed is already right there in the combs for them. Empty combs right there interspersed into the honey-filled combs gives them brood-rearing area right there next to the feed that they need, and they can begin expanding into this area before your spring bloom and warm weather even comes on.
not sure i would checkerboard with honey frames. that might discourage the queen from moving past the honey to the empty comb. i would just pull some honey frames and replace them with empty on either side of the brood. if it looks like she's laying pretty well, you can put a couple on either side of the brood, both top and bottom. then watch to see if they need more room or are using stores. it all depends on your spring flow so you'll have to keep an eye on things.
i agree on the feeding though. no need to feed with that much honey in there.
then....if she rapidly fills the space and/or they are packing in more stores, you may yet need to move things around again!
one other thing. store those honey frames you pull, in the freezer. put some wax paper between the frames so they don't stick. when you need them for feeding back, let them come to room temp over night. THEY WILL DRIP, so if you have a SO and you want to stay together...make sure you take the drips into account both in the freezer and when you thaw.
Good material for reading up on checkerboarding. Checkerboarding does not present a barrier, but rather sets up an immediately usable space.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checkerboarding_(beekeeping) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checkerboarding_(beekeeping))
http://www.knology.net/~k4vb/all%20walt%20articles.htm (http://www.knology.net/~k4vb/all%20walt%20articles.htm)
http://www.knology.net/~k4vb/ABJ%20Copies/ABJ%20June%201996.pdf (http://www.knology.net/~k4vb/ABJ%20Copies/ABJ%20June%201996.pdf)
Some folks like to combine checkerboarding with a practice where they pyramid up a couple frames of brood into the second box. Check out Walt Wright's manuscripts for swarm prevention and nectar management practices - they do pay large dividends in build-up as well as swarm prevention, you just need to understand them and follow up on them correctly. There is some really good additional material out there on this if you look around a bit. I hope that this is of help, it's worked great for me.
Just like to say thanks for all the help and advice. Love these forums.
Thanks again
Randy