Good to see you around, 2Sox.
Actually Warre is big on Nadiring. Nadiring is putting the empty boxes at the bottom of the hive, BELOW the brood nest. Undersupering is putting the new empty super ABOVE the brood nest but below the full supers.
Thanks for clarifying this. I have been wondering if the two terms were the same.
The other is, how do you know to add more boxes without digging all the way down to the brood nest?
This is the biggest reason I don't do it either.
When I was over at my mentor's apiary, he took empty boxes off the bottom and put them on top of his brood boxes. His bees weren't building down, they were building up and he said that they didn't see those empty bottom boxes as open space. I was also under the impression that I should put an empty deep on top of the medium that my nuc will be living in and that they would move up into it because, "bees do what bees do".
In my experience, some colonies are more prone to moving up and some more prone to moving down. For example, this year I didn't reverse my winter boxes right away, I waited about an extra week to see if the colonies that were only occupying their top box would move down into the empty box below, and most of them did. One, however, just sort of refused to do so and was looking rather crowded in the top box, so I reversed theirs, and now they are working the other box. I've also had times where a colony would resist moving up into additional supers, and if I undersupered, then they worked them without hesitation. But usually I just put additional supers on the top.