We placed a new super on the hive back about a month ago.  The second super had been growing rapidly and was beginning to look full.  Two weeks later they had packed another 10 pounds in the first super but had done nothing with the second.  Check out the weight plot from then.

The naming might be a little confusing.  I started numbering the boxes at the beginning.  1 is brood, 2 is the first super, 3 is the second super we put on.  I wanted to keep them all numbered so in case I got a second hive I could track the history of each box.

See, the second super got ignored while the first one went gang busters.  That was until it was full.  Frames 2-9 are packed and capped.  1 and 10 are full on the side facing in, but untouched on the outside face.  They had filled everything with drawn comb, and came to a complete stop.  After a week or two of screwing around we decided checkerboard a little.  I took frames 1 and 10 from the first super and placed them rotated in the second one.

A later check showed a little more activity upstairs.  The state inspector said that sometimes spraying simple syrup on new frames will help them with acceptance.  I tried that on frames 2-6 of the top super.  A week later the results were in.  Though they hadn’t started storing honey they were finally drawing out a ton of comb.  The unsprayed frames didn’t have much going on.  I don’t know what the issue was.  The materials for both supers were bought at the same time.  They took to the first in no time flat while the second one was chopped liver!

In conclusion, spray all the frames with a 1:1 syrup mixture before introducing them to the hive.