On the first really warm day second week of February, it was 70 degrees and I decided to open up my hive. I took all the upper brood chamber of frames and place them in the bottom box, and put all 10 of my BetterComb frames in the upper box. So far, some of the middle frames went from looking like this: (https://i.imgur.com/Ex5HHoc.jpg) to having been worked on looking like this:(https://i.imgur.com/8Ul4jRN.jpg) apparently they do a little bit of maintenance and thicken up the walls of the cell with their own wax just a little before use. I'm happy with the results =^_^=
I used a bunch of it last Summer, it gets hot and stretches, and buckles/folds under the weight of honey. The queens don't like it, it smells like oil, they will eventually lay some in it, but most of mine used it for honey, and it stretched the cells into Drone cells, I use screen top and bottoms, still too hot for it. There are videos of it on my channel.
I heard that can happen, and I'm curious as to how early you put those frames in. Because it looks as though as my bees work on the frames, they are in fact reinforcing it the cells... they definitely look thicker than when they came out of the package.
I have a theory that because my one hive is placed in a spot where it gets a good amount of shade during the summer due to vegetation growth, and how early I put them in for the bees to get an early start working on them, they will likely last a good while. Even if the frames don't droop until after spring time, they'll have served their purpose.
once the oily smell goes away and they smell like bees, they are good for a split, or package/swarm, they just don't hold the weight of the honey