Do they move up or down?

[dgc1961]

I know that I have read this before on the forum, and I tried doing a search about it.  But, when inspecting my old hive today, I see that the top deep is full of honey, the bottom one is not so much.  There are still a couple of frames that they never drew out.

Is the natural tendancy of the bees to move up or down in the brood chamber?

Should I move some frames or or down?

[riverrat]

bees natural instict is to move up. If you have undrawn framed in the bottom deep they may not draw them out if the dont need the room. If you are concerned swap out the drawn frames in the top deep with the undrawn in the bottom they will draw them out eventually when they need them

[Kathyp]

bees natural instict is to move up

kind of. it depends on what they are doing.  a hive in it's  natural state is built from the top down.  honey is stored at the top and down the sides.  brood in the middle.  if you are adding honey supers, put them on top. if you are adding brood space, it may work better to put it under.  there is no hard and fast rule because the bees will often fool you.  i have had better luck with them moving down than moving up.

another consideration is where your entrance is. if it's an upper entrance, they may behave differently than with a bottom entrance.

[annette]

I know when they start to fill up the honey supers and if the queen is up there, I heard that eventually she will go down. It actually happened to me the first year. I saw her walking around on top and I was worried about this.  Next couple of weeks and the whole super was totally filled with honey and all new brood down below in the bottom super.

I was wondering the same thing, up or down.  It seems to depend like Kathy said