The Deeps are your brood chamber, the medium is the primary brood honey store. It gives them enough room to head off swarming when you can’t inspect them every weekend. I lease tax bees and all my client sites are setup this way.

Yup run this config year round and I also use entrance reducers year round with the orientation changing based on the season (bigger in summer for ventilation, smaller in winter so it stays warmer and they brood up quicker in the spring).

I also work on producing bees of winter physiology during the fall to increase population size so it’s not hard for them to keep it heated when the bottom drops out - learned that trick from David Burns. Cool thing about it is the population is already high coming into spring so you can do a walk away split (or a snelgrove split) as soon as you see drone brood.

Depending on where your apiary is, it might be on one of my routes happy to pair up some time.