Most of the time I don't use queen excluders. So the queen can move up and down in the hive laying eggs. Once the honey flow is really on she tends to get pushed down into the deep as the brood area as the top supers fill up with honey.
Often in fall if I haven't yet removed supers there may be brood in the centers of the frames or a mixture of pollen and honey.I find two noticeable differences between a honey frame and a brood/pollen frame.
First, the honey frame is much heavier than a frame with brood/pollen. So as I lift the frame up I can gauge pretty quickly by weight whether the frame has brood on it or if it's just honey.
The second thing is the amount of bees covering the frame. If there are eggs or larvae, the frame will be heavily covered in bees as they warm and tend to the brood. A honey frame will have bees on it but no where near the coverage.
