"there are no good reason i can think of to turn boxes, any only very rarely would i consider swapping boxes. all it does is mess up what the bees have done. if you have issues with bees not moving from one box to another later on, we can give you some ideas. the first one would be to add any hive body boxes (2nd brood box) under the first. it usually works better than popping it on top."
Kathy,
Thank you very much for your advice. Doug and I are going in tomorrow if it's still warm to check things out. (supposed to be around 65 and has been very warm this week and quite unusual). We have some crappy frames that came with the nuc that are broken and we have only moved to the outer most part of the hive on the bottom deep. (brood or honey was in there every time we checked after we moved the crappy frames to the outer part) We want to get in to replace them before the season starts and while they are empty. Or maybe they wont be empty...who knows.
As far as the crappy nuc frames...so be it. We have been so far blessed with very good bees that came off of the crappy nuc frames. So much that we are considering a split if everything goes well this Spring.
I'm guessing our success is that it's more the bees than us. For we are a bungle at this.
Thankfully...these bees are forgiving.
Hope all is well with everyone. It's warming up and that is a great thing.
Best,
Sarita