![]() ![]() Plastic foundation is coated with a thin coat of beeswax over the cell imprints. Of course this would be the easiest route for them. They do not need to make any new wax to make the cells. With traditional wax foundation, the bees literally “draw out” the wax into cells. After reviewing some older bee literature, I realized why it was the case. After a period of time, I also began to see some of this happening in my own hives. Other beekeepers routinely complained that the bees would not draw out the plastic foundation and they had issues with swarming and absconding because the bees refused to draw out the plastic. Of course once it is drawn out, if you re-use the drawn comb, there is no difference to the bees what is underneath it. ![]() The bees do definitely prefer the wax foundation, and will draw that out first, but for several years I had no issues with them drawing out the plastic foundation as well. Although I had some wax foundation in the honey supers, I had mostly plastic. My bees did well on the plastic foundation. I bought plastic foundation for the deeps, which I used for brood boxes, and also for the rest of the mediums, which I used for honey supers. I found medium side bars that fit the top and bottom bars I had, and used what wax foundation was left in the collection I had bought. It was 2005 when I started, and at that time it was beginning to be the norm to use plastic foundation. Since some of the equipment had dates as old as ’78 (as in 1978) etched in them, I have no idea how old the wax foundation was. What he had left by the time I bought his stock was lots of top and bottom bars for frames, lots of deep side bars and some medium wax foundation. He had made bulk purchases of frame materials and wax foundation. When I first started beekeeping, I was fortunate to buy a long-time beekeeper’s entire stock of equipment. Foundationless frames – How and Why to Use them
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