IMO the only thing holding back the queen in a new hive from laying to her capacity is the population of nurse bees to prepare and care for brood assuming adequate food.
So if your goal is to expand the hive faster then add nurse bees. Adding drawn comb doesn't gain you more bees as much as it gains you honey because they don't consume it drawing the comb out.
If you put that drawn comb in the brood nest the Queen is apt to lay. If it's his only hive I think he'll be hard pressed to find nurse bees to put in there. The box is full of drawn comb.
The queen can lay anywhere. Any intervention into the brood nest will set them back. Adding bees is an intervention but it will gain more than shifting frames around in the box. If he cannot add the bees then set and watch but don't touch. Feeding is an intervention too. It works when they need it. If they don't need it it is another net lose.
The OP has had bees for 5 years. Yes, it is an assumption on my part but he might have more than one hive. First, I'm a she and second, I do only have one hive. I know all the reasons why I should have more than one, but I am trying to remain sane and so am curbing my enthusiasm to a point that I can handle. I am going to stay out of it for now. Of course you always want to do something to help but sometimes, I realize, the best kind of help is just staying out of the way.
Will take the feed away when they finish this batch and leave them alone. When they seem to be filling the box closer to the outside frames, I will put on a second box. Thanks everyone. Its hard doing nothing. Nyleve, How much longer before cold weather sets in? That's another thing to consider. I use to put empty frames in the middle of the brood nest - I don't now. I'll take the last outside drawn frame, move it over one and place an empty between it and the brood nest.
Once the bees are put into the hive and the newly adopted queen accepted, it still can take a couple of days for the queen to lay. So, let us start our numbers on April 10th for easy figures.
A queen can lay up to eggs a day. A standard deep frame holds cells. With this tidbit, it would take days for her to lay one standard deep Langstroth frame. If it is a mini frame, there are cells, so it takes about a day to lay one frame. A deep box then has up to 35, cells.
If the queen was to lay eggs a day it would take her about 23 days to do so. In a medium mini framed box, there are 30 frames with cells, that takes then 30 days to fill. Understand that in some cases the bees are having to draw out the frames as well. This delays the ability of the queen to lay in a cell that has not been made yet, nor are there bees to care for the new tender life. Now for a challenge, after weeks it may look like the colony is growing but not a single egg has matured yet into a young bee.
If another box is placed on top the hive or under the hive, the bees will do one of two things, 1 leave it alone, or 2 their population will thin and disperse into the new space leaving the clustering bees that were caring for young to prepare this new space or clean it up. A bee lives weeks, and some of the bees in the package were older bees to begin with. So the colony will actually shrink. You can, but you have to think about how you would feel if you came home and somebody had not just rearranged your furniture, but actually moved all the rooms in the house.
That is what you are doing to the bees. If you do that, it will often slow them down quite a bit. In fact people do that kind of thing to try to prevent swarming. So I try to do a compromise between the two. My bees often build crazy brace comb on the outer frame, until the frame is fully drawn. So when I add a box, I try to make the outer frames mostly drawn comb. That means that I move 2 frames of food into the new box, to sit against the wall. The other frames are undrawn.
With the old box, I move 2 drawn frames of food honey or pollen, one each side up to the wall, leave the central brood nest undisturbed, and put 2 new frames into the box one frame in from the wall on either side of the brood nest. If your queen lays in 6 of the 8 frames in a Flow brood box, you may not be able to do that, and in that case, I would put the new frames against the wall and be prepared to rework them for a month or so until the crazy comb is sorted out.
I might take 1 frame of brood and 2 mostly food frames and move them up. The bees always hurry to fill the voids. The part I tended to overlook about this is that those frames should also be covered with bees. I generally take the two outer frames and put them in the centre of the new box. Well, I just added my second brood box.
I did the checker boarding thing as it worked well in the first box. During my inspection one frame was really heavy, there was lighter capping being made, I believe that frame was full of honey. Two frames were all different colors, full of pollen.
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