Is it necessary or helpful to the bees or beekeeper to reverse the brood chambers around?

When brood rearing begins in late winter or in early spring, the brood area is usually to be found in the upper portion of the brood nest at the time of the first thorough examination of the colony. The brood area will mainly be in the top hive body when two or more bodies are used for wintering the colony, or in the super and the top of the brood combs of the hive body when the colony has been wintered in a single hive body with a shallow super used as a food chamber. Inasmuch as the tendency of the colony is to expand the brood nest upward, the queen will not readily move down to empty combs. Therefore, it is good practice to set the top hive body or super on the bottom board, setting the bottom hive body on top, thus reversing the parts. This reversal brings most of the brood to the lower position with a less amount of brood at the top. It also breaks the circle of the brood, placing the two segments in inverse positions. The queen then moves upward readily, first into the empty portions of the brood area and then into the empty combs above. At the same time, the house bees rearrange the stores of the colony around the new brood area. This stimulates the colony to greatly increase its population. With a good queen in a populous colony, it may be necessary to reverse the brood bodies again before the flow occurs.

Before the beginning of the main honeyflow, the bodies that earlier were placed on the bottom boards in the reverse position will have become empty through the emergence of the brood and the rearrangement of the stores of honey. They then should be returned to their original positions. When the flow begins, they will be used for storing the first part of the flow. At the end of the season, these bodies will be well provisioned with honey and pollen and should be left on the colonies as food reservoirs for winter. During the flow, supers needed for storage of surplus honey are added above these food chambers.