I'm a beginner hobbyist and having tried twice with Pierco on both a 3lb package and later a swarm I had given up on getting straight comb from my bees with plastic. This year though I ordered 4 more packages and having run a little short on traditional wired frames, again tried the last 10 pierco plastic frames that I had, just to give it "one last go".

However this year I did something else different. I bought some of those "beemax" hive top feeders. Before I had used those 1 gallon plastic pails from brushy mountain inverted over the top of the hole on the inner cover. Those pails have a 3/4" screen in them for the bees to get syrup. Not a very big interface. After reading the discussion on the beemax feeders in this forum some months ago I was inspired to give them a try. I though that since there is a much bigger interface to the syrup with the hive top feeders the bees could get more syrup faster and just might draw that Pierco better. And guess what? They did. Just checked the package hive yesterday and they are drawing that comb as straight as you please and have as many plastic frames drawn as the other hives do with the wired wax.

Just thought I would mention that the feeder type seems to make a difference with drawing comb on plastic.

Billy Smart
Rock, KS

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