Long story short...
I left a super on the hive over the winter (I know, I know..!) plus an empty lower deep (Iknow, I know...! - it's amazing my bees survived me!)
In the lower deep (no activity all spring) I alternated drawn comb frames with foundationless frames to start the switch-over to foundationless.
In the spring there was brood in the super (as well as the upper deep), but after it hatched it was replaced with nectar.
Great I think, that took care of itself.
Lost my queen in May, hive requeened itself. She begins laying in the upper deep. Still no activity in the lower deep. Super getting full so I added a second super of drawn frames.
Today's inspection showed beautiful solid patterns of laying in the upper deep, and, you guessed it, in the middle frames of the lower super...I assume that the bees either didn't have the population (with the requeening process's loss of brood) to build out the foundationless frames and/or decided that they'd just use what was already drawn in the upper boxes rather than draw more downstairs.
Questions: I'm going to replace most of the foundationless frames for now so that I have bordering frames of comb in the center of the lower deep, to encourage downward motion. Should I put a queen excluder between the supers to keep her from moving farther up? Should I move some full frames of honey/pollen from the upper deep to the lower to encourage a move down, or maybe even a frame or two of brood?