>>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 *
******************************************************