a Bill Greenrose snip...
What I’m wondering is the following.  With wax foundation, will bees chew through the foundation to move more easily to the stores on either side, which is not possible with plastic foundation?

my questions and comments...
In one of Steve Tabers articles long ago in the ABJ he talked about the importance of having 'communication' holes in the frames for the bees to survive in what sounded like pretty extreme conditions < I seem to recall they were testing various shape of boxes to test essentially for survivability.  The rigid plastic foundation has tear off tabs on two corners and do you tear this off and if yes do you position the tear away tab at the top or the bottom of the frame?  I guess you could always drill holes in the plastic foundation with a hole saw.  

Although I have no similar winter time problems like you describe here... I should add that a bit later in the season when we get the first real pop of pollen my bees will on rather frequent occasions wall off the 'brood chamber' (1 or 2 frames) with solid frames of pollen and this then seems to encourage the hive to funnel up through the center of the boxes.  On most occasions the outer most frames going upward are totally unused. 
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