Will Swapping Super Order Hurt?

[charlescfry]

My question first, then some background: Will changing the order of the supers in a hive cause issues with the bees? That is to say, if I move the top super to the bottom, and the bottom to the top, will this confuse things for the bees?

Now the background... I had a couple hives die over the winter, and I cleaned out the hives and comb as best I could. But I could not get all the dead bees out of the comb without breaking it, and general wisdom said to put it in and the bees would clean it up. So when my packages arrived, I put the bees in the hives (two deeps) with drawn comb and all seemed well. Then a few days after install, we had some cold weather come in, so I added a medium to the top of the hives - the mediums have drawn comb and honey in them. As of my last inspection (a couple weeks ago) the bees seemed moved up in to the honey super and they were not cleaning out the comb in the deeps.

So... I am going to inspect again soon... if they are not using the deeps on the bottom, I was thinking about pulling a switch-a-roo on them and putting the deeps on top. Any thoughts?

[JP]

You should be able to switch without a problem, normally speaking, but, it seems to me something must not be to their liking within the deep.

I would recheck it for signs of wax moth or whatever, give it a good looking over.

If it is infested it could cause them to hang tight or abscond.


...JP