It?s my first year and I got greedy, they filled up 2 supers with honey in less than a month so I took them both in August. They really seemed to take a hit from that, or maybe part of the hive swarmed. The other hive I have is doing great and I did the same thing at the same time to it.
There were bees and resources on 6 of the frames in the bottom deep in early November. I probably should?ve pulled the 2nd deep awhile ago but I thought they might fill it up with syrup feeding.
I did pull the top deep off today, leaving just one deep with the Mountaincamp sugar on top of it. I was surprised how much they were feeding on it already.
Trace
Presuming you are speaking of 10 frame deeps, 6 frames of bees doesn't sound very strong to me. I think you definitely made the right decision to get them down to a single deep. They don't need all that extra space to keep warm and protect. I don't know what your recommended wintering is like in your area, but as far north as you are it sounds to me like you will need to keep feeding them through the rest of the winter. I don't have experience personally with mountaincamp feeding, I make up sugar bricks for my bees if they need some sugar, but I've heard that sometimes the bees don't really eat the sugar with mountaincamp, they just remove it. Keep your eye out for sugar dumped at the entrance, or perhaps consider an alternative method of feeding them (fondant, sugar bricks, etc.). I personally wouldn't trust mountaincamp with a hive I knew needed food, just because I couldn't be guaranteed they were really eating it, but that's just my opinion.
Just a thought, although I'd like someone with more experience to confirm whether this is a good idea or not, and it would certainly require a warm day, but if you have frames in that bottom deep that have no bees or stores, you may be able to replace some of the drawn blanks with the 3 honey frames from the top deep. You'd probably still have to feed them, but it might help them out. What are your thoughts, more experienced beeks?