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) :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: -- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/BEE-L for rules, FAQ and other info --- ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::