# Plastic frames



## AR Beekeeper (Sep 25, 2008)

The wooden frames with the plastic insert foundation are the best in my opinion. The all plastic are a problem to hold on to when you have honey on your hands, they trap bees in the voids in the frame "end bar" portion, and the voids make great hiding places for hive beetles.


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## ralittlefield (Apr 25, 2011)

I agree with AR Beekeeper. I would add that it helps to "paint" some beeswax on the plastic foundation.


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## johnbeejohn (Jun 30, 2013)

i use pierco plastic framesand like them
never have to assemble a frame
come coated in wax use black for brood white ones are to hard to see eggs against 
i do see beetles in the cracks but dont really have any problems with them just a few here and there


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## snapper1d (Apr 8, 2011)

I had 100 of them given to be last year and they all met the burning barrel just a little while back.


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## AR Beekeeper (Sep 25, 2008)

Snapper; You should have done as I am doing, cutting the foundation portion out with my radial arm saw and putting it in wooden frames for surplus honey supers.


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## Fishmaster50 (Apr 30, 2015)

AR are you saying there ok for supers? That is what I plan to use them in.


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## AR Beekeeper (Sep 25, 2008)

They will work ok just as they are except for the things I stated above. I think you will be happier if you use the wooden frames and the plastic insert foundation. If you don't have the hive beetles in your area you should be ok with the all plastic frames/foundations. I just decided to cut away the plastic frame portion and use the center foundation area in wooden frames.


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## Vance G (Jan 6, 2011)

Plastic frames are just fine once you gt them drawn. Take a block of wax and put some extra on. Draw them out a full box at a time and not as the only box over a queen excluder. Put a drawn bait frame to get he bees working in the super. As with getting any foundation drawn, you need to be on a flow.


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## Dan P (Oct 29, 2014)

Like ralittlefield suggested. Coat or just dip them in wax. It helps for the bees to accept them unless they still smell good.


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## The Honey Householder (Nov 14, 2008)

For honey supers I wouldn't use anything but all plastic frames. I just bought another 7200 from Acorn Bee. I buy them double waxed and have never had to rewax a frame. Now for brood frames I mix them, but still like the wooden frames with plastic inserts better in the brood boxes. Buy all my plastic inserts from Acorn Bee too. Nick has always done me right. Top quality product at a great price.:thumbsup:


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## Adrian Quiney WI (Sep 14, 2007)

I like them in the broodnest, but not in the honey supers. I use Mann Lake PF's. I bought them because they are 4.95mm and if there are any benefits from small cells I want to take advantage of them.

However, I do not like them in the extractor for 2 reasons. I bought some Mann Lake wooden frame with plastic insert frames and now have about 20 supers of them and 20 supers of the plastic. Compared to the wooden frames the plastic frames skid about in the extractor. To overcome this I alternate wood and plastic frames in the extractor reel which is a bit of a PIA but manageable. The second thing I have noticed is that when extracted the plastic frames retain more honey than the wooden ones no matter how long I run the extractor. 

So if I were to do it all again I would never have bought the plastic frames for honey supers, but will always buy them for the brood nest. I like them in the brood nest because there are more cells available for bees and honey storage. I always buy the black ones because, as has been mentioned, it is easy to see the eggs and larva. Also, like others do, I add extra wax to them. For the last few years I have been taking advantage of Mann Lakes Black Friday sale and buying enough to get the volume discount (210 frames I think).


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## Vance G (Jan 6, 2011)

I like Mr Quineys answer better than mine. He is right on all particulars.


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## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

Fishmaster50 said:


> What pro and cons you may have delt with?


No assembly. They hold up well in the extractor. At one time, they were the only small cell, medium depth, plastic foundation that I could find. I do not have a problem with bees drawing them out.


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## ralittlefield (Apr 25, 2011)

The Honey Householder said:


> For honey supers I wouldn't use anything but all plastic frames. I just bought another 7200 from Acorn Bee. I buy them double waxed and have never had to rewax a frame. Now for brood frames I mix them, but still like the wooden frames with plastic inserts better in the brood boxes. Buy all my plastic inserts from Acorn Bee too. Nick has always done me right. Top quality product at a great price.:thumbsup:


I just tried Acorns web site, they do not provide any pricing. Do they sell direct, or do you have to buy from a distributor?

I currently buy from Mann Lake $110/$89 per hundred for Rite-Cell deep/medium. Free shipping. Will acorn do better than that?


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## Mr.Beeman (May 19, 2012)

snapper1d said:


> I had 100 of them given to be last year and they all met the burning barrel just a little while back.


I had plastic frames at one time as well and didn't like them. They seemed shorter in length and had a hard time keeping them on the frame rest and there were a lot of hiding spots for SHB. I ended up selling mine, certainly didn't burn plastic (or money). lol Dang snapper1d. lol


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## minz (Jan 15, 2011)

ralittlefield said:


> I just tried Acorns web site, they do not provide any pricing. Do they sell direct, or do you have to buy from a distributor?
> 
> I currently buy from Mann Lake $110/$89 per hundred for Rite-Cell deep/medium. Free shipping. Will acorn do better than that?


Our guys were down at Acorn last year for a Vacuum system and told me they had bee frames. I gave Nick a call but with shipping I could not make it work (so he does do small quantities but the shipping kills). I picked up some ML all plastic and put 5 lbs of wax on them but would have liked to have tried the Acorn double wax. 
If you can get the bees to draw them out in the brood nest in the first year they do fine. If they walk propiilis all over them I can never get them drawn. I don’t think it has been as big of an issue in the supers with my bottom entries.


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

The ruggedness of the wooden frame with the plastic foundation simply cannot be matched by plastic frames (PF Mann lake stuff). As pointed out, particularly in honey supers. I have found that top bar end tabs of the PF frames have a tendency to to shear off once the frames get some age. If you handle them super gently then you should be fine, but even a slight drop of a full honey super and you'll likely see broken frames - with no way to repair them. Sure, you can cut out the foundation and put it in a wooden frame, but why not just buy the wooden frame to begin with? I also have several PF frames that have buckled in the extractor. They also warp under centripetal loads, which probably accounts for the description given in post 12. 

I no experience with Acorn frames, only Man lake PF style frames.


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## mathesonequip (Jul 9, 2012)

typical answers all over the place, it really is up to you. if you mix plastic frames and wood ones the bees will almost always draw the wood frames first, this part of the answer is pretty universal so do not mix until drawn out. plastic foundation holds up in the extractor better, frames or foundation particularly the first year.. my first choice is deep wood frames with mann-lake black plastic foundation. my least favorite is all plastic natural color mediums, tougher to get drawn out... most love mediums, i can be happy without them.


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

Adrian Quiney WI said:


> I like them in the brood nest because there are more cells available for bees and honey storage.


I agree with the fact that there are more cells to raise brood, but I don't believe that you're correct about honey storage. It seems to me that they may actually store less honey than a larger cell frame. Without measuring, lets assume that the available cell-area of the plastic and wood are about the same, then the small cell frame will have a lot more cell walls which reduces the available space to store honey. A frame with a single cell would hold the most honey, and a frame with infinite number of cells would hold zero honey.


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## Adrian Quiney WI (Sep 14, 2007)

There is more foundation area in a plastic frame than in a wood/wax combo frame. This is most evident at the top of the frame as the wooden top bar is much deeper than the plastic top bar. I am not sure whether the larger number of cell walls is enough to offset the lack of cell bar width. 
So, in the interests of accuracy, I would say that I suspect that whilst there are more cells available for bees and honey storage - I am not certain if that equates to more honey stored. However, as I mentioned before, when extracting I can't get as much out of the frame, but in the broodnest that is not a problem. 
Also, I forgot to mention that the thin top bar is a mixed blessing. The bees don't respect it as much as they do a wooden top bar and often fill the space between top and bottom bars with burr comb and honey or drones. In the winter this makes a convenient ladder for bees moving up. In the summer it is a pain because inspections can be a sticky mess when the boxes need to be separated.


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## Dominic (Jul 12, 2013)

Adrian Quiney WI said:


> There is more foundation area in a plastic frame than in a wood/wax combo frame. This is most evident at the top of the frame as the wooden top bar is much deeper than the plastic top bar. I am not sure whether the larger number of cell walls is enough to offset the lack of cell bar width.
> So, in the interests of accuracy, I would say that I suspect that whilst there are more cells available for bees and honey storage - I am not certain if that equates to more honey stored. However, as I mentioned before, when extracting I can't get as much out of the frame, but in the broodnest that is not a problem.
> Also, I forgot to mention that the thin top bar is a mixed blessing. The bees don't respect it as much as they do a wooden top bar and often fill the space between top and bottom bars with burr comb and honey or drones. In the winter this makes a convenient ladder for bees moving up. In the summer it is a pain because inspections can be a sticky mess when the boxes need to be separated.


Not to mention they use the frame walls themselves to make cells in (usually for drones). No waste of space!

My experience regarding the burr comb, however, seems radically opposed to yours. The main reason I dislike wooden frames is precisely because they glue it to everything and are so eager to build burr comb on it. Plastic, not so much, so they are usually much easier to handle and pry apart. Not to mention the inevitable damage from prying the wooden frames, and the inevitable breaking apart, with usually the top bar breaking off (though occasionally the bottom one). I find plastic frames much more convenient to work with, though handling them all day long is a little bit harsher on the fingers than handling wooden frames (not nearly enough to deter me, though).

Unless you meant the space within the frame walls, and not the space between two different frames.


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## D Coates (Jan 6, 2006)

Pros: No time required for assembly and a few more cells per frame vs. woodenware

Cons: Can't repair if an ear breaks, has places for SHB's to hide, cost a little more to buy and ship

I've got a few and they're not bad. I bought some for my deeps as well as supers to try them. The openings that are perfect for the SHB's to hide in is the biggest issue I really don't like. If you're working a cold hive (dead out) the propolis is stronger than the ears when cold. The ears will flat snap off and the drawn frame is now trash. If an ear breaks on a wooden frame, replace the top bar. Tthe plastic foundation will keep the drawn comb fine. 

If I'm low on time and I need frames ASAP I'll buy them otherwise I'll stick to woodenware and plastic foundation. I just bought a pneumatic staple gun to speed up assembling frames so you can see which I really prefer.


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## TimW (May 15, 2013)

I have used Acorns all plastic frames and also plastic foundation with wooden frames. I ordered with double wax and the bees have taken to them in both the brood and honey supers. I'll be ordering more this year.


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## Ravenseye (Apr 2, 2006)

Bees can sometimes take longer to draw than wood / wax. Hold up well in the extractor. I personally just don't like plastic because we just have too much of it with nowhere for it to go down the road but some folks really have good success with them.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

I get more stings on the fingers because I trap bees in the pockets in the frames. Also I find much more bridge comb with them. I have a box or two of them left and am cutting the foundation panel out of them and putting it in wooden frames, just to use them up. Wish they were black so I can see eggs in them better, but they were cheap.

If I were selling a lot of nucs I would use plastic frames, but not in my hives where I have to deal with them constantly.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

The OP and I exchanged PMs awhile back on this subject, but wasn't sure if anyone covered this here or not. Plastic frames, for whatever reason, drive my bees to draw comb up from the top bar to whatever is above it. Now... I haven't had to deal with much burr comb (or whatever the correct term is) between boxes because I had quite a bit of foundationless frames and the resultant drone combs seems to (for the most part) prevent them from getting stupid with burr comb. But the boxes that have plastic frames in the bottom ALWAYS have comb built up and attached. And it seems like the propolis doesn't hold the plastic down as well or something, because the frames with pop out in a chunk when trying to break boxes apart instead of the burr comb breaking. So I'll pop a honey super off and when I pick it up 4-6 deep plastic frames below it will still be attached to the box. If I tip the box to break it loose it will eventually and then let the frames slam back down.

Not sure how the description will read, but hopefully it comes across. I haven't had this happen with wooden frames. Maybe it's just coincidence? Even with extra wax added the bees liked to reject the all plastic frames and built out the adjacent wood/plastic frames. Frustrating at times. Someone on here claimed that it was a cell size issue because the ML cheapies have 4.9mm cells and the Rite Cell is 5.4. These were "natural cell" from the get go, as I was originally foundationless... and they still rejected the small cell in large part. There's 60 of the dumb things floating around in my boxes... 15-20 of them were drawn poorly or just stripped of wax. But I never had to remove a wood/plastic frame and recoat it. But some of those plastic frames were recoated 3-5 times and still rejected.


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## Ravenseye (Apr 2, 2006)

jwcarlson said:


> Plastic frames, for whatever reason, drive my bees to draw comb up from the top bar to whatever is above it.


I had that problem too when I used plastic but not in all my boxes (from varying suppliers). I wonder if it also has something to do with the box? In any event, I found it to be easier to twist the upper box like you're unscrewing it from the one below. Only need to go about 45 degrees or so and then it's easier to pull the top box off.


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

I believe it's a bee space issue created by the box and the frame.
Can't confirm because it's to darn hard to measure.


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## Ravenseye (Apr 2, 2006)

I probably should add that I have that problem from time to time with wooden frames as well so it's not exclusively plastic but it seemed to be that the plastic frames were worse in that regard.


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## Colobee (May 15, 2014)

I'm "all in" with plastic frames. With wood shims on both ends & the top, they make a solid and easy "shared frame divider" for my converted 10 frame double nuc boxes.


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