>>And, finally, I was hoping for a pointer to some information and some anecdotal info on wax vs. plastic frames (I am guessing it is a perennial topic). It was recently reported that Tom Seeley's experiment showed that bees started with wax and plastic foundation produces more honey with the wax foundation. It remains to be evaluated if there is a difference in honey production bet. colonies on drawn plastic frames vs. drawn wax frames. I've only used plastic frames in my hives because they are easy for the beekeeper. The bees draw out waxed plastic fairly well although one can 'see' a delay in getting started and a strong flow is needed to keep them going. I once gave several colonies uncoated plastic frames and they did everything but draw them out. They 'hate' the plastic and will only draw it out when pushed very hard. Time and again they will try to build parallel comb between the plastic frames. It must be very frustrating for them to work on uncoated plastic. I said bees 'hate' plastic but it's probably more that they don't 'see' the cell embossing. Besides the cell base geometry there probably also needs to be wax present for them to 'see' it. There may also be another factor in plastic vs. wax. There seems to be evidence that bees vibrate the comb as part of their communication. The plastic is likely to have a different vibratory response resulting perhaps in distorted communication... Waldemar ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ******************************************************