Liz,
Those little frames that you have seen with honey cone are the same
type of thing that is used in regular honey production only on a bigger
scale.  Emagine a rectangle about 24 inches long and 12 inches high.
Then a foundation is place in this frame.  Now if a bee keeper wants to
be able to cut up the honey cone once the bees have drawn out the wax
walls and filled the cone with honey, he will use a foundation that is
pressed from Bees Wax.  If on the other hand he would like to spin the
honey out of the cone and then reuse the cone, he may choose to use a
plastic foundation with a bees wax coating.  The advantage to this is the
fact that the plastic will stand more stress when the honey is being
extracted adn will not blow out.
     I guess the thing to remember here is that it takes about 7 lbs of honey
for a bee to produce 1 lb. of wax.  So if you are strickly producing honey
you don;t want to make those bee's work on creating to cone but you
want them to spend their time collecting honey.