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