I beg to differ. If you put one frame into a super, and leave the rest of the box empty, my bees will build crazy creative comb, hanging from the inner cover, every time. I haven’t done it deliberately myself, but in 30 years of beekeeping experience, I have seen it a lot.
If you ever try it, I look forward to the photos… 
This is advice based on a bee expert with 30 years as well, who’s also quick to say, nomatter your bee experience everyone has their own way of doing things, not right or wrong, just different.
My suggestion was gleaned from his knowledge and experience and I think it sounds like its worth a try.
What do you suggest if your bees aren’t beginning to fill the flow hives? All I’ve heard from you are arguments.
Sorry about that. Let me fix it. I hadn’t realized that you are probably new to the Flow forum and haven’t seen my numerous posts over the last 18 months.
The above are methods suggested and endorsed by Flow. I have also just taken some burr comb from cleaning up frames during a routine inspection, and smeared blobs of it onto each face of the Flow frames. Within a couple of days, the bees were in the super, and a week later, nectar was being stored. The bees cleaned up my messy wax with no problems.
@Gerald_Nickel has posted photos of waxing the frames, and @Bobby_Thanepohn has even made a video, if you have time to search for them. Enjoy your adventure with bees, I will buzz off now. 
Result of forgetting to fill the hive with all frames:
Don’t leave frames out of the hive, especially a Flow hive and especially if there is a honey flow happening: When honey bees are 12-20 days old they want to draw wax and given the space and a honey flow, they will draw it their way. Also, they will extend the cell walls. hence, why with conventional frames we put 8 frames in a 10 frame honey super. The bees will extend the frames really wide making it easier to cut the cappings off. I don’t know if that could be troublesome with a Flow Frame. I’ve also had them start new comb on top of capped honey and then cap that.
Honestly- listen to what Dawn and Chilli say- I’m not sure if you confused the information you got form your beekeeper friend but what you suggested is a recipe for problems/disaster. Even if the bees just focus on that one comb (which is doubtful) they won’t have any adjacent combs to guide them as to how far out to build that one comb…
A friend of mine transferred bees from a nucleus to a long hive and he left the spacing between the frames too wide- just like in Chilli’s 2nd photo above. Within one month the bees had built out all the combs too fat- we had to go in there and trim off every single frame- it took an hour and a half and resulted in quite a few bee deaths and a lot of disruption. As Chilli said- if the gap between frames is too wide the bees will build each frame out beyond the normal width- and with flow frames that will mean you won’t be able to fit them all into the box- and there won’t be enough space between the frame faces for the bees to work. Fixing a problem like that would be difficult and result in a big mess.
That is not what I was saying at all.
I was responding to someone who couldn’t get their bees to fill up one flow hive which I don’t even know where that led.
Never mind.
Actually, that wasn’t the issue. The real question was why the bees don’t fill and cap the outer edge rows of cells on a frame. this is what she wrote:
This thread wandered way off-topic, and a lot of that is my fault, sorry. However, I think it is typical for bees not to cap edge cells for some reason. They do that even on traditional frames. Not at all unusual. I don’t know why, but it really doesn’t matter. If the frame is at least 90% capped, the honey is very likely to be ripe. Hope that gets your thread back on track @cathiemac
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This thread wandered way off-topic, and a lot of that is my fault, sorry. 
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Always the trouble maker! 
sorry- I wasn’t meaning to bother you- I understand the difference between the brood box and the flow frames- but I think the same applies for the super as the brood box: if you put a single flow frame in the super there is nothing to stop the bees attaching comb to the roof and building it wherever they like: and given that bees prefer natural comb to plastic I would hazard a guess that they are more likely to do exactly that given the choice between one flow frame and the ceiling.
Also even if they do concentrate on the one frame- there is a chance they will build the cells out further than they would if there were frames immediately adjacent. If that happens you will run into troubles as you add more frames- and eventually the last frame may not fit. If that happened it would be quite annoying to deal with- as you would have to remove frames and shave off wax…
On flow frames the bees build out the wax beyond the plastic. On the two wall sides they have a little more room than all the other frame faces and they tend to make the combs ever so slightly fatter there- because they can. For that reason I don’t swap my flow frame positions around- as if I do I can end up with an issue of not enough beespace between the frame faces… My brother tried moving his frames around so the bees would work the ones they hadn’t worked yet- and it stuffed up his beespace…
I honestly think you may end up with some troubles if you try putting in only one frame at a time.
Our flow frame on the window side is completely full and 97% capped. We have attempted to inspect the frames and have had no luck getting them out! Between the tight fit and every inch of each flow frame sealed with propolis from top to bottom and side to side we can not remove any of them. The entire box weighs about 70-75 lbs.
The back window of the flow frames shows that the end cells are not filled at all. Is it normal for the end cells to not be filled?
Should we harvest this frame or any others since we are unable to do a full inspection of both sides of the flow frames?
This thread has some good ideas, including some suggestions direct from Flow. It might be worth trying some of them:
It can be. My bees filled the end cells, but if you have ever done traditional beekeeping, you will see that even in an all wax honey super, the outer cells around the edge of the frame may not be filled or capped. The second photo in this blog shows what I mean:
http://www.personal.psu.edu/jad52/blogs/bee_log/2009/08/
I would try some of the ideas in the link above first. However, if you really can’t inspect them, I would harvest cautiously.
If the frame isn’t fully capped, you risk a big honey leak into the hive from the uncapped cell faces. Drowned bees are not pretty. To help reduce this, you might open the frame in 20% segments, waiting 10 minutes before you advance the key to the next segment. If you see bees pouring out of the front of the hive, or honey dripping from the back of the hive, you will know that you shouldn’t continue opening any more cells. In that case, if the nectar flow is over for the year, I would use a bee escape below the super to clear it of bees, then take it inside the house and harvest over a large cookie sheet to act as a drip tray.
As you won’t know if the honey is capped, you also can’t be sure it is ripe. So I would buy a cheap honey refractometer to test the honey. They are simple to use, and then you know whether you can sell it as honey (less than 18.6% water), or whether it should be kept in the freezer and used quickly once defrosted.
Thanks so much Dawn!
Dee Diesman
How can this happen when the cells slant downwards?
Because the cells only slope down at 15 degrees, so more than 60% of the cells’ contents could theoretically drain out if the honey was very fluid. For my own honey, the leak was very small. If you search my recent posts, you will find all of the data. 
