# Cleaning off plasticell foundation



## Bee Draggle (Apr 5, 2006)

I've heard you can pressure wash Plasticell but I haven't tried it. You can put the frame in the freezer for a few hours to make the wax brittle and then try scraping. This has worked for me. After scraping down to the original raised cells you can blast it with your garden hose for futher cleaning. If you have pollen bound frames you can soak them in water for a few days with a tiny bit of detergent in the water. They gently wash the pollen from the cells with a garden hose nozzle set on "shower". Then return the frames to your hives for the bees to raise brood in or whatever. That may sound like a lot of trouble but drawn comb is very valuable and saves your bees tons of work.


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## xC0000005 (Nov 17, 2004)

I used the pressure washer on a bunch of frames I got from a friend. Coocoons are hard to remove. Wax is easy. Both give way with the right amount of pressure.


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## Troy (Feb 9, 2006)

I was going to try the pressure washer this past weekend and I got to looking at exactly how I was going to do this.

I could not see an easy method for holding the boxes, frames etc while hitting with the pressure washer.

Has anybody come up with a good hold down method? I assume that most bee hive components are small and will just fly away when hit with the pressure washer.

I inherited a bunch of frames that I'd like to reuse, but I want to clean them off first. Holding down these frames will be difficult. 

I sure don't want to risk spraying my foot. A friend did that and his ankle was a mess for weeks as the pressure went into the flesh and blasted off some skin.


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## Dan Williamson (Apr 6, 2004)

Just a thought but you might try freezing it and then trying to scrape.

Last winter I had a dead out and was checking some frames and dropped one. The wax was extremely brittle and upon dropping the frame half of the comb popped completely off the plastic foundation. 

You could test it on a few. Freeze them and then run your hive tool along the foundation and see how easy (or hard) it comes up.

Just a thought.


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## geoffkb (Jul 2, 2007)

*Try boots.*



> Holding down these frames will be difficult.
> 
> I sure don't want to risk spraying my foot. A friend did that and his ankle was a mess for weeks as the pressure went into the flesh and blasted off some skin.


I think putting your foot on it would be the way to go, provided you're wearing wellington boots. Wellingtons are also very good if you want to stop bees from crawling up the leg of your bee suit,  and who doesn't?


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## Troy (Feb 9, 2006)

Dan, I tried scraping it off while at room temperature and I was disappointed at how easy the cell walls are damaged. I would think they would be even more delicate once frozen. I might end up with almost no cell walls at all.

Geoffkb, I like those boots. Where can I buy a pair? Did you mail order them? I did a quick online search and they all seem to come from the UK.


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## Dan Williamson (Apr 6, 2004)

You won't have any wax cell walls left. I use almost all pierco so I don't know about the other brands but I've scraped numerous frames with no problem. The wax is very brittle when cold. I don't think you'll need much pressure to remove it.

If you wanna keep the wax cell walls then I can't help you.


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## Troy (Feb 9, 2006)

Dan,

I wasn't talking about the wax cell walls, but the plastic cells on the plasticell. They have a tiny wall on them when new and the bees just build them up.

I found when I scraped them, the small plastic part of the cell walls is somewhat crushed or bent over. I can't imagine the bees having an easy time fixing that. They can't chew it off and it sticks into the edge of the cell at a right angle. Granted all this is at a very small scale, but when I looked at it I thought it would be a problem.

Not to mention that even after doing all this scraping, there is still a lot of dark brown wax and goo left on the foundation. For some reason I thought I'd be able to get these things looking almost new again, and I've been frustrated by my inability to do that.


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## Dan Williamson (Apr 6, 2004)

Troy said:


> Dan,
> 
> I wasn't talking about the wax cell walls, but the plastic cells on the plasticell. They have a tiny wall on them when new and the bees just build them up.
> 
> ...


When I've scraped at room temp I always get a wax smearing on the frame. The bees usually draw it out fine although not always... Occasionally you will get drone comb there.

Try putting in the freezer and scrape upon removing. I haven't tried it but I don't think you will have them looking like new doing it at room temp.

I once thought that buying equipment and trying to salvage it sometimes (many times) isn't worth the effort. Boxes are one thing.. but frames, foundation especially are nearly never profitable from a labor standpoint given the cost of new. Doesn't help you now.


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## Grant (Jun 12, 2004)

Either freeze them, or wait until winter. I used a spackle spreader about 4" wide. Frozen old comb comes off pretty easy. 

I then go over them with a stiff plastic brush. I bought mine in the household section of Wal-Mart. You hold it in your hand as it has no handle. It has short 1" bristles and it reminds me of the old brushes my mother made us use when we had to scrub the floor on my hands and knees.

After this, I don't bother to pressure wash them. I don't think you need to get them to "like new" condition.

I've also had some minor wax moth problems and they do an excellent job of cleaning up old comb! But it's not on my list of preferred methods.

Grant
Jackson, MO


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## geoffkb (Jul 2, 2007)

*Wellington Boots*



> Geoffkb, I like those boots. Where can I buy a pair? Did you mail order them? I did a quick online search and they all seem to come from the UK.


Hi Troy. Maybe they're not called wellington boots here. I, like the boots, come from the UK. I bought my boots in the agricultural supply place in Fresno a few years ago. It's a funny place to buy wellingtons, I assume in Fresno they'd be called irrigation boots or something, but I tried searching for those and got full length boots. 

They're great and pretty cheap I seem to remember, there are lines around the leg so you can cut them to different a different length. Try your local ag supply place.


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## BeeTeach (Nov 10, 2005)

*Hot Water*

Has anyone tried dipping plastic frames in hot water? The temperature would have to be adjusted to somewhere between 140-212 degrees to minimize warping. The wax should clean up with the slum gum falling to the bottom. The fairly clean wax would be at the top and recoat the frames/foundation when pulled out. This is just a theory that I have yet to try.


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## RonS (Dec 28, 2004)

Troy,

Wellingtons are sold and just about any Farm Feed store. Horse people use them when mucking out stalls. Great for just about any farm use, especially in mud, muck, or dirty wet work.


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## Bee Draggle (Apr 5, 2006)

Beeteach,

I've never tried this but it sounds like a great idea that may actually work. It might be best to start off with some undrawn plastic foundation and do some temperature testing to see just how much heat it can take before warping. If it can stand 150 degrees, you may have something there. Please let us know if you come up with something. The tricky part will be controlling the heat.


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## lilbob369 (Aug 21, 2009)

*Re: Hot Water*



BeeTeach said:


> Has anyone tried dipping plastic frames in hot water? The temperature would have to be adjusted to somewhere between 140-212 degrees to minimize warping. The wax should clean up with the slum gum falling to the bottom. The fairly clean wax would be at the top and recoat the frames/foundation when pulled out. This is just a theory that I have yet to try.


yes this is a good way. one must watch the temp,because the first time i tryed this,i melted my frame! re-dip in wax,or paint wax on with a brush. a beekeeper on youtube has some good stuf john pluta . check him out.


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## D Coates (Jan 6, 2006)

*Re: Hot Water*

Definately don't put Perco in your wax melter. They warp like shinky dinks. I love the idea of dunking them in hot water but I wonder what they'll do. I'll check out the you tube.


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## Another Bill (7 mo ago)

I'm all for reusing stuff, but after watching some of the guys on You Tube cleaning the plastic foundations, I have to question it. The plastic foundations cost two bucks apiece. Scraping all the old wax, soaking the plastic, and power washing, it seems like your time, effort, and expense of the running the power washer would eat up any saving you're looking for.


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## Beeves4u (Dec 4, 2021)

Take a piece of scrap plywood and drive 4 nails in it about 1/2 inch larger than the frame, now powerwash. The nails keep the frame from moving when you hit it with the powerwasher, I have found that the white nozzle works best for me.


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## Live Oak (Oct 11, 2008)

Troy said:


> I am a fairly new beekeeper. Just starting my second year now.
> 
> i have invested rather heavily in plasticell foundation with the idea in mind that it would last a long time. I had planned to be able to scrape off the wax and clean it up for reuse.
> 
> ...


I have dealt with this issue for MANY years. Several year ago, we had a freak hard freeze on the 17th of May. All of my hives were HEAVILY full of brood. I southwest middle Tennessee, this was a beekeeping disaster to say the least. We lost 60 hives, most of which had fairly new Mann Lake black plastic foundation on wood frames. We were just overwhelmed with a huge mess. I had to make the decision to get on with tending to the surviving colonies and just put the set the boxes aside in a lean to while removing the worst frames of dead brood to lay out in the sun to dry out. We tried scraping off the foundation with hive tools but they were a juicey and horrible smelling mess. I finally threw in the towel. It WAS depressing. I let the bees clean up the frames as best they could and the boxes full of comb sat in my lean to for a few years. 

This year, I needed a lot more frames and decided to clean up the mess in my lean to at the same time. By now, the frames in the boxes were very dry & brittle and dark gray looking. I experimented with a few hives by scraping the frames clean with my hive tool as best I could followed up by using an old bee brush to remove the remaining dry comb that would come off. The frames still looked pretty bad. I put them in very strong hives to observe what they would do with them. I have about 75 Apimaye hives of various sorts and ran out of Apimaye boxes, so used standard 10 frame deep boxes full of the old ratty looking frames that "cleaned" up. I initially tried just setting the deep box of frames on top of the hive. The bees either did not touch them or did very little to them other than clean them up a little bit more. When I saw this, I decided to checker board the ratty looking frames with every other frame from the box below whic were primarily honey frames but still a good amount of brood in some hives. When I did this, I almost immediately noticed a very large increase in traffic activity going to a from the hives. After about a week, I checked on the hives due to the heat, and noticed some SERIOUS bearding on the outside of the Apimaye hives even though all of the vents were open. 

I began to pull open the plastic drawers on the bottom of the Apimaye hives and to my shock and joy found they were TOTALLY full of dark, fluffy, brood comb scale and residue that was on the frames that I put in these hives. The residue 100% filled the drawer and blocked off the plastic bottom board grid. I'm talking about 3 to 4 inches. On my Langstroth hives, I have screened bottom boards & I suspect the bees push it out the bottom through the screen. 

Long story short, if you clean up the plastic foundation as best you can like this, a strong hive is capable of cleaning it up the rest of the way. I also found that by checker boarding the frames like I did, this increased ventilation inside the hive and almost completely stop the bees bearding up and "wash boarding" on the front of the hive now that they had something to inside the hive and more room was made available. 

If you want your plastic foundation perfectly clean, pop the plastic foundation sheet out of the wood frame, lay it on a clean, flat section of concrete and pressure wash it. You can paint/dab/roll hot bees wax onto the foundation sheets if you prefer to give the bees more wax to work with. This works on plastic frames as well but just be more careful. 

Good luck! Foundation & frames are getting really expensive. Best to try and find ways to recycle or reuse what you have before buying more. The bees will amaze you with how much they can clean up.


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