honey super cell report

[Pond Creek Farm]

I am not having the results with HSC as I would like.  I have HSC on an entire deep with another deep above stocked with Mann OLake PF-100 plastic frames.  Granted that these bees have gone through a flood, queenlessness, requeening and the bumbling efforts of a first year aspiring beekeeper, they are almost exclusively upstairs.  They are just now starting to fill one of the lower frames of HSC with honey.  I understand that this is an abnormal situation in that normally one wold not put a second deep on until the first is full, but a flood changed everything.  We were throwing things together as quickly as we could to salvage what we had.  We did not change things around later in that we felt the bees had been disturbed enough, and we needed to see if we had a queen.  The thought was to leave them alone and then go back and look for larvae which, indeed, we did find.

In any case, I am curious as to why the bees do not seem to like the HSC and whether I should flip the boxes to encourage its use. We are not done with honey flow here, but will be by mid-August if present weather holds.  Any advice?  Should I simply scrap the HSC?

[Robo]

I have found if you give them a choice, they will mostly stay away from the HSC as long as they can.  They will slowly store pollen and nectar in it.  After which, the queen will sporadically lay in it. After a few brood cycles,  they use it just as well as wax.

For me,  I put them exclusively on HSC and force them to use it.