Robin Dartington said:

> I think you will find beeswax foundation is the best, for the hobbyist.

Well, lets see... he has 4 hives, all using Plasticell now in their
brood chambers with no problems to date.

If he decides to go with wired wax for his supers, how long before he has
his supers ready?  Assuming that he needs 4 medium supers per hive, this
would be a total of 160 frames at 10 frames per super  (144 frames at
9 frames per super).

How long might it take a novice to install eyelets, wire a frame and embed
the wax foundation for a single frame?  An optimistic estimate would be 10
minutes total.  If so, he will need to spend 1600 mins (26.6 hours) wiring
and embedding his frames, over and above the time required to assemble the
frames.  If he has a day job, and can only devote 4 hours a night to this
task, he will spend a solid 7-day week of evenings doing nothing but this
wiring and embedding.

In contrast, he can spend about 5 seconds per frame snapping a sheet of
wax-coated plastic into each of his assembled frames, and be done with
all 160 frames in well under an hour.

Offhand, I'd say that the labor savings alone make wax-coated plastic
"free" as compared to wax foundation, even if one's time is valued at
well below minimum wage rates.

> Bees like it - so no problems.

I know of no studies that concluded that bees accept wax foundation any
more readily than wax-coated plastic. My own efforts to determine what
bees "like", or if they even are capable of such emotions, have been
frustrated by an insurmountable language barrier, but I, like many
beekeepers, have found no significant difference in "acceptance"
of wax-coated plastic versus traditional wax foundation.

Wired wax is "traditional", but there is no reason to blindly follow
"traditions" forever. Today's "traditions" are nothing more than
innovations dating from before we started keeping bees.

The main threats to developing useful new beekeeping traditions are
the placebo effect and it's mirror image, the "nocebo" effect.  Both
are common reasons for confusion among beekeepers, the placebo effect
making beekeepers think that something "works" when it does not, and
the "nocebo" effect making beekeepers blame unrelated problems on the
focus of their attention (for example, blaming misdrawn "wild comb" on
the type of foundation used, which is a lot like blaming a house fire
on the species of tree used for construction lumber).

Accurate records for every colony can eliminate the siren song of both
the placebo and nocebo effects.  Yes, weird things happen with bees,
but they are mostly random weird things, or the result of simple errors
on the part of the beekeeper.

Don't miss out on the traditions of tomorrow!


                        jim (who makes a living dreaming the
                       dreams your stuff are made of)

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