Hi all:
I have only four colonies and am just ending my first year at keeping bees
in southern california.
I had used only Dadant Plasticell foundation for my initial brood boxes and
the bees drew them out quite nicely.
However, I decided to try their Duragilt foundation in my newest hive and
find the bees made this wild arrangement of combs resulting in several
adjacent frames essentially grown to one another with comb bridging the gap
between frames. The only way I could get one of the frames out was to tear
them apart. It was a big mess
In one of the combs the bees had chewed away portions of the pressed beeswax
leaving the bare plastic film substrate.
"Plasticell" foundation is plastic molded with a raised cell pattern then
beeswax coated. If the beeswax is removed, the hex pattern remains.
"Duragilt" consists of a smooth plastic sheet with beeswax cell pattern
pressed onto the surface. If the beeswax is removed the cell pattern is
gone.

To date,I have not tried traditional beeswax foundation.

Anyone out there have similar or contradicting experiences?

Thanks

Bill Meister

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