Dean was wondering what how my experience with PF100s would turn out.
PF100s are the supposedly 4.9, but actually 5.0 mm one-piece frames that
Mann Lake is selling. I bought about 400 or so by mistake, two years
ago, thinking I was getting Pierco or Pierco knock-offs from a
commercial beekeeper I know. I did not realize they were not Pierco
knock-offs for a few months after they arrived and were in the hives.
At the same time, I bought a similar amount of wood frames with black
foundation already installed. It was around 5.35 mm, I think. This
year, I bought 1500 Pierco standard black frames, wax dipped.
This year and last year, I put entire boxes of each of these on hives
and boxes of mixed types. Sometimes I pulled up a brood frame as bait
if the hive looked to me to be less than powerful.
I have just now worked through 61 of my 110 hive, pulled and extracted
25 boxes of honey and am now ready to issue an opinion.
After looking at hundreds and hundreds of these three kinds of frames, I
now have expectations when going through a hive.
When I see a Pierco top bar, I expect it to be drawn perfectly and
completely 90% of the time. The rest of the time, the frame will be
unfinished, or sometimes finished, but with a single vertical brace comb
to the box or next frame. If newly drawn, there may be an attachment to
the frame below.
When I see the wood frames, I expect the same.
When I see a PF100, I expect to see it drawn perfectly about 30% of the
time, the rest of the time it is untouched, done on one side, drawn with
lumps of strange comb or other abnormalities. Again, it will be
attached the frame below sometimes.
Once drawn, the bees seem to accept PF100s intermixed with other frames
in the brood chamber, and do not seem to discriminate against them.
The wood and Piercos are nice to handle and not easily broken. My
PF100s are brittle and prying with a hive tool can damage them. I have
to admit that some were left in the sun for a while and they turned
yellow and _very_ brittle, but even the ones that have been kept the
dark are brittle compared to Piercos. The PF100s also have sharp edges
compared to Pierco which has nice rounded edges.
All in all, I would not buy PFs again.
I don't like wood frames as much as I once did since the Piercos have
been so excellent and offer 20% more brood cells per frame -- perfect
for singles. If the PF100s were drawn well, tougher and better to
handle, I'd prefer them for the added cell count of the smaller cell,
but the negatives outweigh that positive, and my bees seem to vote
against them.
So, I am going over to 100% Meijer EPS standard boxes and Pierco black
frames and will phase out the wood and the PFs.
***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html
Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at:
http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm
|