> I installed 1000 frames of Pierco in wooden frames last
>year and there is no comparison.  I am steadily culling the crimp-wired beeswax frames on spring inspections now.  I am also slowing culling all solid plastic frames.  I have American made and imports and all break the ears off with a little age.  I also hate the way they stick together top to bottom when >separating hive bodies.  I am 100% sold on wooden frames and plastic waxed foundation.  You get what you pay for.

Bill, your post is very timely, at least for me.  I have run solid Pierco frames for more than 10 years.  Most of them are about that age and all are over six years old (the last time I expanded my apiary, going from 6 to 12 hives).  I have never had a problem with acceptance and drawing out of frames, provided there either is a flow on or the bees are fed lots of syrup.  I have loved the durability of the frames (every single one is still in use, and only a small handful have dents in the ears from my prying too hard with my hive tool...never broke an ear), and the way they help force straight, even comb.  In the past the bees have occasionally drawn out too far on one frame and little or nothing on the one next to it, but it has always been easy to fix by just scraping down and placing between two well-drawn frames.  What has been a ROYAL PITB is the bridge/brace comb the bees almost always build all over the plastic frames, better than some welding jobs I've seen.  This happens no matter how carefully I space the frames.  I also see a lot of propolis on the tops of the frames, especially near the inner cover.  I had read years ago that the bees will do that to plastic foundation, but the benefits so far outweighed the hassles, that I just lived with it and worked out my 'technique' for prying frames up in order to be able to separate boxes.  But, over the years I have grown weary of the practice (as I have grown weary of so many other unnecessary practices on my way to a more minimalist approach to life): 1) it takes more time, 2) it is a hassle, 3) it creates a mess, especially if the bridge comb has honey in it, 4) the added destruction can rile up the bees, and 5) it would appear to be unnecessary.  Plus, there is always the risk of squishing the queen, if she happens to be on the top of a frame, when the box is replaced (I confess to not always scraping down the bottoms of the frames before replacing, especially if there's a lot of honey).  In sidebar conversations with folks on this list, who have WAY more hives than I do, it was confirmed (anecdotally, no empirical, statistically significant numbers, so don’t shoot me) that the bees will use more wax to 'cover up' the foreign material and that using wooden frames with plastic foundation is the best compromise.  So, I JUST placed an order for 360 wood frames with plastic foundation (I run three deeps x 10 frames x 12 hives = 360).  Now that pollen is coming in and the bees are building up nicely (despite getting another inch of snow Friday), I look forward to my latest project of swapping out old frames for new frames.  The one advantage I thought all that bridge comb might provide the bees was to make it easier, especially for the queen, to move between boxes.  But, given all the activity that goes on inside a hive, I'll bet that's probably not a big advantage.

Since I have never scraped down or otherwise removed the comb on the solid plastic frames (except to realign those occasional off-drawn frames),  most of it is pretty old - 6 to 10 years.  I figure this will also benefit my colonies, even though I have not used Apistan or other 'hard' treatments in several years (I'm more of a formic acid kind of guy - still a treatment, but a little 'softer', whatever the heck that means...to me it means little or no residue).  Guess I will finally set up that solar wax melter I bought over a dozen years ago, but never used, and make me some bees wax blocks.  I plan to keep some of the oldest frames to use in swarm traps, which themselves are old single deeps with old covers and bases that I place up on idle tractor implements and wedge into the crook of my 'swarm tree'.

For now, at least, I am sticking with the solid Pierco frames for my supers, because they should not be on long enough to get seriously glued down (assuming I remove them in a timely manner....big assumption).  But, depending on how this year goes, that could be a project for next year.

Anyway, sorry for the long response, but just wanted to share my story along with yours, Bill.  I will report back later this season on my experience with the new frames and whether or not I see the hoped for reduction in excess comb.

Thanks for giving me the incentive to post.

Bill

p.s. Stupid human trick #4,682 (I have a lot of them): One time I got the bright idea to 'slice' through the extra comb, kind of like a cheese slicer (which is how I got the idea).  So, I took an old, guitar string I had changed out, tied it to two pieces of wood as handles so the length was a little longer than the width of a box, and I pulled it between two boxes.  The problem was that 10 frames of bridge comb provided a surprising amount of resistance, and it was REALLY hard to accurately control the movement of the wire up and down.  So ,I managed to slice right through the upper box , removing a wedge of wood from the bottom on one side that was almost an inch deep on one end.  Somehow, the frames were undamaged.  I glued the wedge back on, but that was the end of that experiment.  It was too unreliable, and, frankly, too much of a struggle to control and pull the wire through.  I  used high E.  Maybe if I had used one of the wrapped strings - D, A or low E?  Now THERE'S an experiment worth conducting:  "Differential resistance of the passage of phosphor-bronze wound steel musical instrument strings of varying gauges through varying thicknesses of beeswax, honey and bee larva, when pulled with variable  force at variable rates and the probability of said movement recreating  Rimsky-Korsokov's Flight of the Bumble Bee".

###################################
Bill 
Claremont, NH
Don't shoot me, I'm only the guitar player

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