I think the deal with beech is that you only get one main flush of growth a year.

If you hard prune in late winter, you can stimulate secondary bud break elsewhere and lower down on the tree.

But if you then re-prune in mid summer say, you won't get a second major flush of growth and secondary budding as you would with an acer for instance.

Possibly some thing to do with being late to leaf in the first place- well into May in the UK.

Southern UK beech forests are still totally leafless here and the 4 or 5 I have in the ground are just showing the first signs of bud opening if you look closely.

That's my understanding.

In my experience, you prune back to a bud pointing the way you want the branch to go even if it's the last one. Die back is minimal.