Brood chamber too high?

[belleterre]

All -

I tried this on another forum, but didn't really get a response.  I'm hoping somewhere here can help.

I am a fairly new beekeeper living in NC. I obtained my first hive very late last summer and this is my first year going through spring buildup and swarming. I have three hives right now and my big hive (the original one) swarmed at some point in late May or early June. I had split it right before the swarm and was left with two queenless colonies. The smaller colony showed signs of a queen very quickly, but the larger colony was queenless for at least two weeks (could have easily been over three weeks). Just as we were about to give up, I noticed unusual activity and we decided to do a full inspection this morning. Starting from the landing board, the bottom two supers (what I thought was the brood box) were empty. They held maybe one frame of uncapped honey in each. The third super had some pollen and uncapped honey and still had many frames with undrawn foundation. The fourth super was the surprise. Out of the eight frames, 5 had brood and several of those were packed. The fifth super had 4-5 frames of capped honey.

My question: I'm leaning toward shifting the brood box to the bottom, putting a super above it to allow the queen to move up if she runs out of space, adding the capped honey, and then adding one additional super to allow more room for honey. This would reduce the hive from 5 supers to 4. Is this the appropriate course of action, or do I leave the set up as it is?

Pictures of my last inspection and details are available at my blog http://juliasbees.wordpress.com

Thanks in advance for the advice

[iddee]

I would remove super 1 and 2. Place super 4 on bottom, super 3 in center, super 5 on top. Allow the bees to fill these 90% and then add a super back.
Where in NC are you. I'm dead center of the state.

[OzBuzz]

I'd move the brood super down to the bottom and consolidate the filled frames in to one super and put that on top of the brood... watch closely and add another super of drawn foundation when needed - save having too much empty space and will allow the colony to build up

[belleterre]

Thanks OzBuzz & iddee.  This is the way I was leaning.  Having the two empty frames on the bottom just seems wrong nevermind making it so top heavy that I get nervous every time it gets windy.

I'm toward the mountains in NC - in between Hickory & Gastonia.  We just purchased 6 acres further toward the mountains (Morganton) and hope to have a much larger bee yard (10+ hives) there in the next year or so.  I have so much learning to do between now and then!

Julia  :)

[iddee]

Welcome to the forum, Julie. When you get to Morganton, be sure to join the mcdowell county bee club. It is one of the best in the state.

http://mcdowellhoneybees.org/

[belleterre]

I'll definitely check it out iddee, thanks.  There's no bee club where I live currently, so it'll be nice to get to know other beekeepers in the area.