This has been fantastic information.
I too have had no super activity recently. New hives too.
Bees won't draw comb during a dearth or drought, all foraging goes to hive survival so the brood rearing drops dirastically also and can cease altogether.
I gather from the above that the queen excluder should be removed until they start drawing out comb in the super?[/quote]
That is correct. Proper use of an excluder requires leaving it off until the bees are working the frames--drawing comb and storing nectar. Most books that advise use of the excluder fail to mention the qualifiers. To draw comb in supers for a harvestable crop the requirement is a nectar flow, good weather, and easy access to storage area (at least to begin with). Once the bees have pretty well drawn out 3 frames the super has sufficient resources to the hive so the workers will pass through the excluder. Another way is to take the 2 storage frames from the outside of the top brood chamber and move those up to bait the bees through the excluder--in this case the bees might draw out the frames the replaced those used as bait before moving up.
I plan on adding a hivetop feeder to both my 10 frame hives so they can get enough food to eat this winter..
This is for post harvest to top off the stores of the hive and backfill much of the brood chamber (that's not going to used for brood anyway) for surviving the winter. Doing it now, when the possibility still exists for 1 or more honey flows, will force the bees to backfill now which can result in a late August or September swarm, which can be real hard on the hive. Backfilling is one of the earlier signs of swarming during the foraging season, the bees stock the stores so they have enough for every worker to gorge themselves on when they swarm.