Hive management question

[beesnweeds]

Two of the nucs that I overwintered and hived in the spring both filled out two deeps.  The lower deeps are full of open brood and the uppers are full of capped brood being backfilled with nectar.  They have a few swarms cups with no eggs yet.  I placed 1 honey super on them about 3 weeks ago with no queen excluders and they don't seem to be touching them.  Both hives are healthy, queen right, and nice to work with.   Not sure how to make them work the supers.  Maybe these two hives would be good candidates for a Snelgrove board, I've always wanted to try them. Thanks for any advice.

[GSF]

How's the flow up there? If it's drawing down then it'll be difficult to get them to draw it out. Otherwise, if the latest super is a deep as well then move some brood frames up in the middle of it.

[Acebird]

I am going to assume you only have foundation in the super and not drawn comb otherwise I would suspect a problem.
What I would do at this time:
Pull the two outside frames out of the top deep.  Spread the frames apart so you can place a medium frame in the 3rd and 6th position for a week and it may take two.  If you get any honey or brood in those frames after the week or two pull them up into the super above and place them is the center of the box.  Any drawn comb on the bottom of the mediums will have to be sacrificed.  Replace the deep frames that you took out back where they were.  Once you have drawn medium frames you can pull two of them up to the next box to continue the expansion.  In August this will be slow going until aster and goldenrod kick in.

[Michael Bush]

>They have a few swarms cups with no eggs yet.

I would not put those two words together "swarm cups".  A cup is just an empty cup and means nothing.  It has nothing to do with swarming or anything else at all.  Swarm cells are even pretty ambiguous as there is nothing specific about a "swarm cell" that would indicate it's purpose.  It could just as easily be a "supersedure cell" and deciding what the purpose of the cell is requires more than a look at the cell.  It requires knowledge of what the colony is doing and how many cells there are.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesswarmcontrol.htm#supersedure

You have cups with no eggs.  They mean nothing.

[GSF]

I think the cups gives them a warm and fuzzy feeling. Michael's right they don't really mean much to us.