Green Plastic Drone Frame

[Oyster]

Brushy Mtn sells a green plastic drone frame with foundation. Their instructions say to allow the bees to draw comb, and then after brood capping, scrape off the comb down to the foundation, and reinstalling the frame to start the process again. Has anybody used this? Is this more work for the bees (i.e., to create new comb from scratch) than the effort the bees expend to uncap the cells of dead drones that result from using the freezing method to kill the pupating drones, plus the effort to remove the dead drones from the hive?

[Lesli St. Clair]

I used it last year. I only uncapped when I wanted to count mites. The rest of the time, I froze and put it back in. I'm not experienced enough to tell you whether it slowed them down, but I do know they were happy to use the fram to store honey in the fall.

[Dick Allen]

Lesli, did you do any treatments for mites other than drone trapping?

[Lesli St. Clair]

No. the hive died over winter, but starved--nothing to do with varroa. I never found more than 5 mites in a full frame of drone brood, so I'd say they were ok.

I'm using small cell this year; I'll let you know how that works. I'll probably do some drone uncapping to monitor levels.

[popscott]

I just pulled and froze my first frame last week...I froze them 3 days.....scratched the caps off and set it out to thaw the night before...my results from letting the bees clean out the cells was now I have the many dead larva laying on the front landing board of my hive...but will have to watch and see how quickly they clean them up and start relaying....they don't seem to want to draw the plastic out very quick (with everything else wax foundation), so that is why I did not destroy the larva/drawn comb.

[Michael Bush]

I wouldn't bother to uncap them. The bees will do that.

[justgojumpit]

I'm having trouble with some of my colonies drawing the foundation right, and others are doing a nice job. I'll give the frames from the freezer to the bees that just can't get it right, and let the hives that draw it out well just keep drawing frames out for me. I really like the concept though.

justgojumpit