Mark: My goal is to recycle these for use in the supers.  I could just
>scrape the brood comb off, but remnants will remain in the base of the
cell imprints....

I have found that gently scraping off old brood comb with a hive tool
followed by cleaning with a high pressure air gun that has a sharp high-
volume flow pattern will give quite a sufficient cleaning of plastic
frames.  I usually hold the end of the nozzle about 4-6 inches away from
the frame at an angle and with a raster type motion and allow the high
pressure jet from the air gun to take off all wax, waste, and cocoon
remnants.

Sometimes the old remnants are rather stubborn to remove; however by
changing the angle of attack of the air stream and or the distance from
the air gun nozzle to the frame I find that I can work anout a frame a
minute be it a deep or a medium frame. This works great for snap-in
foundation as well.

Caution should be given, the use of safety glasses is recommended since
you are working with compressed air at about 110 psi. At this pressure
even the most insignificant piece of debris can become a blinding
projectile.

After air cleaning I simply return the cleaned framed to their respective
hive body or super, no recoating needed.  My experience with re-using
plastic frames is with Pierco plastic frames and snap-in inserts only;
however, considering that the material composition of most of the brands
available are the same type plastics I would suggest using this method as
well. Try it!

Chuck Norton
Norton's Nut & Honey Farm
Reidsville, NC

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