# My bees HATE platic frames and foundation!



## efaure (Apr 30, 2012)

New beek here. Put waxed plastic foundation in and they have refused to work them. If I am lucky I might get a "wave/ripple" pattern but no full good drawn out frames. The frames that I washed with hot water and removed everything off of, they will not touch. Any suggestions?:scratch:


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## Kamon A. Reynolds (Apr 15, 2012)

They like having a wax coat on the plastic. Also feed heavy. It helps if the don't have to much space also.


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## mattheritage (Apr 17, 2014)

Yeah I put a couple plastic wax coated EZ frames in with my foundationless. The won't hardly touch the plastic but they draw the heck out of the foundationless. If you want to used foundation, maybe try wax foundation.


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## Sovek (Apr 27, 2014)

Bees will only touch plastic foundation if its the only thing they have left to work with. They prefer to work foundationless, but if they dont have that, they will start foundation. Plastic is a last resort for them.


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## Dominic (Jul 12, 2013)

Sovek said:


> Bees will only touch plastic foundation if its the only thing they have left to work with. They prefer to work foundationless, but if they dont have that, they will start foundation. Plastic is a last resort for them.


Indeed. But if that's the only thing they have, then they will use it. They are reluctant to start building on them, but once they have, this deterrence is pretty much gone. It helps to squeeze one here and there between drawn frames.

I use plastic frames almost exclusively, and once I run out of frames, I'll buy more. I'm quite satisfied with them.


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## Bees of SC (Apr 12, 2013)

I started with wax foundation back when I started. After a few years, wax plastic was the way to go, have tried that far a few years, now I use foundationless and the girls like it better.
They built out the waxed ones real nice and fast. The waxed plastic ones I don't even want to talk about but I will say they give beatles and wax moths a good place to hide even if the girls do build them out. Now I use foundationless I just had to build the frames, I all so use 15lb fishing line. The girls build them out quick with less wax to start. They build out and fill it .
Just my opinion and what my girls like


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## Santa Caras (Aug 14, 2013)

Bees of SC said:


> The waxed plastic ones I don't even want to talk about but I will say they give beatles and wax moths a good place to hide. Just my opinion.


IMHO 100+! 
I was astounded when I first saw a plastic frame w/foundation. While it looked strong and indestructable...like it would last forever......all the lil cubbyholes in this style frame, are nothing but hidey holes for the SHB down here. May work for up north but I threw them away the first chance I was able to pull that out of the nuc boxes they came with. (plus of the 5 frames in the nuc...hardly a bit of worked wax on this frame)


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## mathesonequip (Jul 9, 2012)

try adding a thicker coat of wax before use. try spraying the frames with light syrup, some add a little honey-b- healthy or other flavor to the spray. if you mix wood frames with plastic foundation with all plastic ones the bees are slower to work the all plastic ones .some hives do not care, some hives seem to refuse all plastic frames. I like wood frames with plastic foundation. I add a touch of vanilla extract to a spray bottle of light syrup and mist the frames. this years experiment seems to indicate the bees like cheap imitation extract better than the pure real stuff??? a couple of drops of lemon grass oil on top of the frames also seems popular.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

Your bees hate when you do lots of things such as steal honey, but as a beekeeper we learn how to get them to cooperate (on a good day.) if you want to use plastic foundation you have to learn how. If you do want to use plastic it isn't at all hard to get the bees to draw it out. If you want Proof then check this out - http://www.cookevillebeekeepers.com/06/plastic-foundation-love-it-or-hate-it


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## JohnMosher (Jun 15, 2014)

I started with the full plastic frames. I do not recommend them. Why use plastic when your bees will create the foundation for you? Its really up to you!


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

efaure said:


> The frames that I washed with hot water and removed everything off of, they will not touch. Any suggestions?:scratch:


Those frames likely came wax coated, which you washed off with the hot water. Plastic without a wax coating isn't likely to get much attention from the bees. With the wax coating, they work it just fine. I got tired of reading all the various somewhat charged opinions on frames, foundation, etc. My goal, minimize the work for me, and the way to do that is not bother with fiddly bits assembling frames, just take plastic out of the box and put it in the colony. So I decided to ask my bees if they have a strong preference. I took a 'fresh out of the box' Mann Lake PF-100 frame, and fixed it up like this:-



That frame went into a rather strong colony, in the brood nest. After two days, I popped it out to see what it looked like, and it looked like this:-



The angle of the light makes it tough to see, but, on the foundation side, they have started comb on well over 50% of the surface. A couple days later, I did a cut down split on that colony because they were starting to show signs of backfilling, and I was leaving town for a week, couldn't keep a close eye on them. After we got back, I checked the frame again, it had been in the colony for two weeks, and it looked like this:-



My conclusion, not much if any difference in how much comb gets drawn when I give the bees a choice, work the plastic foundation, or the foundationless section. There is a flow running, and they want comb. I think the best thing to come out of this experiment, going to have a nice chunk of fresh new comb, full of honey, which wont end up in the extractor, it'll end up being cut comb honey. Should be a new queen laying in that colony this week, so that frame is going above an excluder to make sure no brood ends up in the comb I'm going to use for comb honey pieces. But my bees have told me very clearly, plastic foundation that smells like wax when I put it in the hive, will get drawn just as fast as foundationless, provided there is a flow running.

In another experiment I did, along the same lines, I have a box of older PF-500 frames that have been in the box for a couple years, and lost the fresh wax smell, they come out of the box smelling like plastic. I took a deep super, put 3 of those in the center, then on one side I put 3 more, but painted with wax which I melted in the crok pot. Then on the other side, I filled the rest of the box with fresh new PF-100 frames, right out of the box, that do have the sweet wax smell when they come out of the box. The older plastic smelling frames have not been touched, the waxed PF-500 frames are fully drawn, as are the PF-100 frames.

After all of my experiments this summer, I've more or less confirmed a lot of what were my suspicions. To get plastic frames drawn they need to NOT smell like plastic, and there needs to be a flow running. I've got a number of boxes of frames well under way now, and my experiments have confirmed that I really dont need to do a lot of extra work to assemble fiddly little pieces making wood frames, then wiring and putting in foundation. Plastic frames are just fine, provided conditions are good. My other suspicion is, when conditions are not good for getting frames drawn, it wont matter what kind I put in the colony, none will get drawn. I dont think I'm going to spend any time/effort to prove that one.


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## mathesonequip (Jul 9, 2012)

great post grozzie2


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

Grozzie2 - great experiment. Mind if i reference it and use your pictures on our club website?


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

David LaFerney said:


> Grozzie2 - great experiment. Mind if i reference it and use your pictures on our club website?


Feel free.


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## minz (Jan 15, 2011)

If I paint the plastic (even wax coated) and place them in the hives, on a flow, with a full moon, they draw them. If the y do not get done by the end of the flow they stay half drawn for the last 3 years. The frames that I painted years ago, no go. I made the mistake of putting undrawn plastic in the center of the drawn wax, this year. They drew out the wax to 2x and did not even start the wax. I do love them when they are drawn. They seem to be bullet proof, a lot less screwing around and you can just about run over them with the truck (I did that to a box of wax foundation in the late fall).
I was unable to see your photo’s Grozzie2, it may be my work server.


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

grozzie2 said:


> Plastic frames are just fine, provided conditions are good. My other suspicion is, when conditions are not good for getting frames drawn, it wont matter what kind I put in the colony, none will get drawn.



Correct. I don't use the all-in-one plastic (for other reasons), but I do use wooden frames with plastic foundation (Rite-Cell) and it works great - again, conditions need to be right to get foundation drawn.


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

minz said:


> Ido not get done by the end of the flow they stay half drawn for the last 3 years. The frames that I painted years ago, no go.


I have found that flow and population are critical to success. If frames go in towards the end of the flow, the bees will remove all wax from the undrawn parts of the frame, which will make it nearly impossible to get it fully drawn unless you go to the effort to recoat with wax and give back during a good natural or man-made flow.


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## Cleo C. Hogan Jr (Feb 27, 2010)

grozzie2... Did you note that a tremendous number of the cells drawn out in your experiment, (last photo) (foundationless side), appear to be drone cells, whereas the ones on the plastic side are all brood size cells?

cchoganjr


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## mathesonequip (Jul 9, 2012)

Cleo C. Hogan Jr said:


> grozzie2... Did you note that a tremendous number of the cells drawn out in your experiment, (last photo) (foundationless side), appear to be drone cells, whereas the ones on the plastic side are all brood size cells?
> 
> cchoganjr


how about that, kind of wants you to consider foundationless. that is one of the reasons foundation came into use as a management tool years and years ago. or if you really wanted this you can get a whole lot of plastic drone frames.


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## KQ6AR (May 13, 2008)

If you don't have a honey flow & the bees don't need more space for brood they won't waste the energy to draw any type of frame. You might need to feed 1:1 syrup.

grozzie2 Great job!


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

Re drone cells. My colonies dont normally draw much / any drone comb in the worker frames, they have a green drone frame for that. We haven't seen any attempt to draw drone cells in other frames since we started putting the drone frames in.

That is a Mann Lake PF-100 frame, so 4.9mm cells.

Ok, I got the ruler out, sort of. Popped the image up in gimp, and started counting pixels across the two different sized cells. Since the small ones are known to be 4.9mm, and 5 of them spans 176 pixels, and 5 of the bigger ones span 229 pixels in the original unshrunk image, a little arithmetic tells us, those are 6.3mm cells in the freeform section. Interesting, I had noticed they were bigger, just never paid much / any attention to how much bigger. Now we know. It's a bit surprising, this colony has raised a full round of brood in the drone frame, and there is NO SHORTAGE of drones. I dont try restrict my colonies from raising drones, rather I promote it by making sure the green frames are in the brood nest.

Now I'm wondering, are they drawing that size in prep for drones, or is it because they are stuffing it full of honey and have no intention of raising brood in it ?


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## dleemc1 (Dec 31, 2012)

KQ6AR said:


> If you don't have a honey flow & the bees don't need more space for brood they won't waste the energy to draw any type of frame. You might need to feed 1:1 syrup.
> 
> grozzie2 Great job!


this is my third year using wood frames and plastic foundation, I have made some mistakes and had some learning to do on the bees reaction to plastic verse wax and even duragilt over the years I have tried it all. I like the plastic but you have to use it a little different. you cannot checker board honey frames with foundation they will draw the drawn frame very thick and not draw the foundation. a hive body of foundation on top of a strong hive in a good honey flow results in great frames that will last for years, they stand up good in the extractor, are straight and I really like them.


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## Bob J (Feb 25, 2013)

Awesome experiment and post grozzie2....:applause:


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## lilhouseonprairie (Jun 19, 2014)

grozzie2- This is litterally the kind of stuff that keeps me waking up in the morning! I love doing tests like this. The many ways I tried treating red ant hills, marking and documenting 10 mounds at a time with more than a dozen treatments...highlight of my week!. Really cool experiement. 



Directed at everyone...I have wood frames with Rite-Cell foundation. If I wanted to experiment a bit with what my bees preferred, could I just take the plastic sheet out of the wood frame and set that in the hive like that? Or do I need to place in some sort of guide or guard? These are medium frames.


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## KQ6AR (May 13, 2008)

I use foundationless frames, just glue a few Popsicle sticks in the top groove.


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## jdmidwest (Jul 9, 2012)

Bees will do what they want to do. I run all plastic, Pierco and Permadent. I started first year with all plastic frames and foundation built together. Those are the ones that are the easiest to move from hive to hive, less propolis and better comb. The rest is wood frames and plastic foundation. More burr comb, weird comb, and even comb drawn between the frames. But it is nice when they take to it and draw it out.

If you have a frame blowout or separation, it is really easy to transfer the drawn foundation into a new frame. You can scrape the goofy comb off of it in an inspection and let them try again. It should hold up great in an extractor, no matter how hard you crank it. And it should last forever. It is tougher than any other type of foundation or foundationless. I only mess with wax now in honey supers, and then it is only for comb honey. My supers for liquid honey are filled with permadent.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

Lilhouse - you can just pop the plastic foundation out of a frame and use it as is if you put it between 2 brood frames. It will be a little more fragile than if you use popsicle sticks until it is fully drawn and well attached on all sides.


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## psfred (Jul 16, 2011)

My buddy used up some plastic foundation (Mann Lake) he already had this year, but after the bees drew out and filled some wax foundation before using the box of plastic on the same hive, he's all wax now. We had a big spring flow, and they did do a nice job with the plastic, but he's not going back. It's a hassle to cross-wire foundation, but I believe the bees like it better.

Foundationless frames require a lot of planning and manipulation if you don't want lots of drone comb. If you have quite a few in the hive at once, they tend to draw the top half as drones here, every time, so I limit them to two or four per hive toward the outside. Gets drawn as drone comb top to bottom, but they only use it in the spring so far.

Peter


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## OC_Bees (Jul 4, 2014)

I use Pierco frames, my bees work fine with it. Pretty heavy nectar flow right now. Will experiment with other frames next year. If you can't get them to draw out comb try spraying the frames with some 1:1 sugar water. I did that on mine and they worked it right away, now up to 2nd honey supers.


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