>>If your bees feel they need passageways through your foundation they will
>make
>>their own in the places THEY want them.
>>Chris Slade
>>
>
>Are bees capable of chewing through plastic foundation?
>
>I have only seen the holes in Perma-dent (plastic).
 
Well, they have been offered for some time on the Duragilt/Duracomb thin
plastic core foundations.  (Not sure about the aluminum-core foundations
before that.)  The bees won't chew through the plastic.  (If you find some
that do, maybe they could probably do a real number on the varroa, too...)
 
The "communication holes" are at the bottom corners of the foundation sheet
--  pretty close to the edge of the frame.  Seems the bees could just go
around the frame there just as easily.  Sometimes the bees will chew the
wax away from the plastic base of Duragilt around the holes, which is
annoying and cuts down on the useable comb area.
 
With further regard to the comb-holes idea, Steve Taber has written of some
work he did with the USDA, using large hives, containing brood combs much
wider and deeper than the Langstroth.  In those, the researchers provided a
more centrally-situated communication-hole in each comb, to maintain
connectedness of the cluster between the large surfaces.  This allowed
sufficient lateral movement as well, such as during wintering.