Beesource Beekeeping Forums banner

Can someone please explain the Foundationless hype to me?

86K views 344 replies 42 participants last post by  cerezha 
#1 · (Edited)
Hello,

I like to post thought provoking posts so I ask those pro and against, what is the surge in interest for foundationless that I have seen online in the last few years all about? From my own perspective I used either wired wax or plastic coated with wax foundation.

These are if I understand it correctly the benefits of foundationless and why I dont see the justification.

1. Less contaminants in the hive--yes it is true that even wax from the cleanest foundation maker will have some contaminants in it I remember a study where Jennifer Berry had alot of trouble sourcing pure clean wax for a foundation experiment. However, these contaminants are minute and even if you have the bees draw out their own wax, bee meds and and other contaminates usually find their way into any hive from the outside world from robbing and fruit spraying etc.

2. It is more natural---Listen I hate to tell everyone but beekeeping is by definition not natural. Sticking insects in a painted box when and where we want is not natural at all from the get--go. That combined with the parasites like mites that we introduced to the environment make the whole environment the bees have lived in for millions of years not natural.


3. Less work than putting in all that foundation. Perhaps if the bees draw out all the frames correctly, but more often than not alot of initial adjustments are needed which you do not need to do with foundation. Plus for newbees learning for the first time learning to open the hive and observe the bees can be overwhelming enough let alone messing with the combs. And in terms of work for the bees it will take around 8 pounds of wasted honey for one pound of wax (yes I know this number is subject to debate) just to get them to draw out the whole frame and so I would like to give them any boost I can. Plus with new beekeepers you need to idenifty if the bees are drawing alot of drone comb which bees accustomed to worker cell foundation seem to love to do--whole frames of it at first until they feel they have enough for the hive.

4. I want natural comb cell size--yes this is good but the first comb your package bees draw out will probably be large cell anyway as the bees are not regressed--so now you need to cut out that comb after a few rounds of brood and make them build it all out again-setting them back further--at least with small cell foundation the bees will get a head start on doing all of their work again!

That is what I thought of so far let me know what you all think for and against!
 
See less See more
#101 ·
"The three most frequently detected pesticide residues in treatment combs were the beekeeper applied miticides fluvalinate, coumaphos, and coumaphos oxon metabolite."

That's why folks go foundationless. To avoid contaminants in wax foundation.

It doesn't really apply to plastic foundation though, does it?
 
#104 ·
Is there really a hype? Yes, I have seen a few more newbees wanting to do foundationless than in the past, but not that many. At the same time, I see plenty of people who have been doing it for a long time. Michael Bush is probably the most visible, however, I would classify his foundationless use as tertiary in his operation, primary being PF-120's and secondary being Permacomb or whatever it is. I forget. Plastic comb. A typical Michael Bush box is one permacomb in the middle and eight PF-120's Occasionally you will come across a small batch of foundationless, but primarily, it is PF-120's.

Having seen Mr. Bush's operation, I've moved wholesale toward PF-120's and 100's when necessary. They're just so easy to use and bulletproof. The difference with me is that I trim them to 1 1/4" end bars. I do put the occasional foundationless frame in between PF-120's mostly because you can't get drone frames in medium size.
 
#107 ·
If you read the paper, coumaphos and fluvalinate are both found in the low ppm range in comb wax.

That's significant.

So, by using PF 100/120 frames, we're introducing pesticides into our hives from the get-go.

Maybe the only treatment free folks are the ones who are both 'hardcore' treatment-free and foundationless.

Is there such a beekeeper?

Dean?
 
#111 ·
So you stick this stuff in your hives but you criticize people who don't because they don't live up to your definition of "don't"?
No stones to throw. No foot to stand on.
For a student of environmental engineering, you dismiss the key components of a treatment-free system too readily.

I used PF 120s because they were recommended by certain treatment free types.

Now that I've made the transition from foundationless (which I was) to PF120s (which took a while), I realize that I've contaminated the whole danged thing since I've mixed them in the same hives.

The concentration of pesticides in the wax coating of PF 120s is far higher than I realized now that I've looked at the data from the study above.

Denial isn't just a river in Egypt.

This is no small matter. It's an unpleasant surprise...

One I'm sure that some of you will try to sweep under the rug (kinda like the artificial propolis/wax dipping).
 
#112 ·
It does a huge disservice to the whole beekeeping community to muck about with definitions. Call it (treatment-free, contamination, denial, etc.) what you want, but the facts aren't going to change.

The very highest concentrations of chemicals in this study you keep referencing are chemicals put in there by the beekeeper. The rest are chemicals tracked in by the bees. There is nothing that can be done to isolate the wax from those chemicals and their corresponding low doses. But I can keep bees without adding chemicals. That's the part I can do. The rest is fanciful nonsense intended to obfuscate the efforts of others.

They told me I couldn't do it, then I did. Now they tell me I'm not doing it. It's hokum.

Wouldn't it be great if this convo got moved to TFB, then you'd have to abide by the actual definition.
 
#115 ·
I have no idea as I've never used any foundation. My goal is just to do everything on my end that I can to reduce any input of potentially toxic chemicals into the hive. I can't control outside of my yard, but I can control what I put in my boxes.

Perhaps the folks who did the study referenced earlier in this thread will continue their experiments with wax-coated plastic.
 
#116 ·
My personal concerns with plastic basically center around the fact that plastic is made from petrochemicals and will most likely have some off-gassing or leaching that will in some way affect the bees. We are continually finding human health issues related to chemicals leaching from plastics that we have been using for years. BPA, for example, is one that has been used in baby bottles, water bottles, can linings, etc for many years and we're just getting around to finding out that there are health effects. As a backyard beek with no intentions of profit, why take chances when the bees can do it themselves?
 
#117 · (Edited)
When you get microgram quantities of pesticides in each gram of wax (about a mL), then you can appreciate why even wax coated plastic can be problematic. That 8ppm number for coumaphos is big.

So, from my perspective, foundationless is the best approach to minimize contaminants.

That's the real 'hype'.

I can't believe how much pesticide must be in my hives right now just because I mixed wax coated plastic w/ foundationless frames.

D'oh!

Here's a different study with Frazier's name attached.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0009754

Taken together, both studies clearly indicate the extent of the wax/foundation contamination problem.

PS-I've noticed that no one has mentioned that wax from a foundationless/treatment-free operation would make for cleanr burning beeswax candles.
 
#118 ·
I can't believe how much pesticide must be in my hives right now
Micrograms, surely.

I understand the confusion now, it's a matter of understanding units. One microgram is one millionth of a gram. For instance, if you weighed 150 lbs., it would take about 102000 micrograms of cyanide to kill you.

You could just order your frames without wax coating and coat them yourself or even leave them uncoated. Maybe you didn't think of that.

The best approach to minimize contaminants in real numbers is not to dump chemicals in your hives.
 
#121 ·
When you get microgram quantities of pesticides in each gram of wax (about a mL), then you can appreciate why even wax coated plastic can be problematic. That 8ppm number for coumaphos is big.
A microgram is 1 millionth the size of a gram. A milligram is 1 thousandth the size of a gram. Rounding 8 micrograms to a milligram seems like a stretch to me
 
#120 ·
How can going foundationless not be cheaper? Plastic foundation is $1 a piece, $10 per box. I run two deeps and super on that for my honey, thats atleast three boxes of foundation per hive which equates to about $30 just in foundation. If I have 10 hives thats $300 just in foundation. I can take that saved money and buy more frames and more hive bodies.

As for the drone comb being built on the whole frame...........GREAT!! I can cut out the whole "varroa trap" frame and let them build it out again. I do have a couple hives that had full frames of drone comb, I can also circulate those into other hives or move them up and they can pack it full of honey for me!!

I dont know if foundationless is healthier for bees or not, im not a scientist. But I have found them to draw it out WAY faster than if they have to start on plastic without the extra coating of wax. Some of the comb does get jacked up, but its rare and mostly due to my putting undrawn frames next to undrawn plastic. If they mess it up, I cut it out and they can start again, afterall the house bees do need something to keep them busy, right!

I am going to try one box of foundationless in the medium honey super and see how it goes, right now I do run plastic that I bought last year when I started.

I do love foundationless, but the real test is going to be when I move my bees here shortly from one yard to the next and see if the foundation comes apart, if it does I will be ready with rubber bands and will end up going back to plastic foundation with extra wax melted onto it.......and pouring out more money for it!!LOL
 
#124 ·
The LD50 of many of these wax contaminants is 2ng/bee.

I am comfortable going from ng/g to ppb, etc. . The 1st paper showed amounts in the ppm range for individual contaminants.

What we need to know is how much wax (in grams) is used to coat a plastic frame (or contained in a sheet of foundation) to get an idea of how close to the LD50 you get.

I think it's pretty close per frame. I would also note that synergistic effects have been shown to occur when different pesticides are combined.

The second paper showed lower pesticide amounts and had some useful median values as well.

I suppose someone could take out a calculator once all the values are known to see how bad things can get when using wax foundation or coated plastic.

It's a useful way to compare the pesticide burden in wax foundation/wax coated plastic frames vs foundationless.

Why guess?
 
#179 ·
#125 ·
From the emotion being posted on this topic, I get the idea that there are a lot of people watching this thread that are losing sleep over this. To their horror they've realized that they are using plastic frames in their hives and that they have given their bees a death sentence from vast (i.e. microgram) amounts of toxic sludge found in the wax coating of their frames.

Just want to offer a sanity check here. We are talking about the thin layer of wax coating on the frames and it's level of contamination was at a concentration that was habitable to previous hives. That coating wax is minuscule compared to the actual clean wax that they will draw out on the frames over top of this and use.

How much wax is used to coat a set of 10 frames? Is it even a grams worth used to coat a full set? The actual amounts of wax that gets harvested by melting down completely drawn out frames is nothing (and thats for full drawn out comb not the wax coating).
 
#127 ·
Based on what WLC said above, that the LD50, which means that 50% of the bees will die at that concentration, is 2 nanograms per bee. That means one bee would only need 2 or 3 1000ths of a microgram to die. I don't doubt that there are various detrimental effects to the bees systems at lower dosages than that.

Another problem that I can see with wax contaminant accumulation is that as foundation is used and more contaminants are collected in that wax, then the wax is recycled for more foundation, the contaminant concentrations would logically be getting higher and higher over time. That would be an interesting study, as well.

Good discussion! I hadn't thought about a lot of these issues this critically before.
 
#132 ·
Based on what WLC said above, that the LD50, which means that 50% of the bees will die at that concentration, is 2 nanograms per bee
Is the LD50 rating based on bees ingesting the 2 nanograms of toxin, vapor exposure to the toxin, or is it based on skin contact? I'm assuming the rating is based on ingesting it in a water-based food solution which is much different measurement than exposure of it residing in buried wax.

Again if the LD50 was based on a bees exposure to the toxin in wax, it would have killed off the original hive that had its entire comb containing the concentrated toxins well before it reached that level.
 
#128 ·
There's alot of information in both papers. They're worth looking over at least a few times.

However, I don't think that a gram or 2 of wax per plastic frame is an exageration. Also, wax foundation probably comes in at alot more than a gram per sheet.

I'd say that a sheet of wax foundation can easily have 10-100 ug of pesticides.

PS-Don't forget that the fungicides can interfere with pollen/nutrition, etc. .
 
#134 ·
However, I don't think that a gram or 2 of wax per plastic frame is an exageration.
Googling I found that some beekeepers who roll their own wax on waxless frames use roughly 2 pounds for 100 frames. If you go with that as a baseline that converts to about .3 grams of wax to coat the 2 sides of a frame. I would speculate that the frame companies are even more efficient when applying wax, so the standard store bought frames would likely use less than .3 grams.
 
#129 ·
Here is another thought. As a beginner would you rather be choose a method that involves picking out the right kind of foundation among dozens of choices, choosing the right size, wire or no wire, maybe getting an extractor, monitoring for diseases and then choosing a chemical treatment that may or may not work and then determining the right time to use it,

Or,

Being told just to buy all medium boxes and medium frames, coming up with a guide and then just dumping the bee's in there and basically ignoring all the the terrible things that you hear about effecting hives until fall where you simply pull out your frames, cut out the comb and strain the honey in a plastic bucket. If your hives die then your not a failure, your just removing bad genetics.

Even assuming none of this is actually true, which method sounds the most appealing?

Its the same reason people by Apple (computer) products. Simplicity is perhaps the most appealing trait that a product can have.
 
#133 ·
Table 4 in the second paper is a good place to look at the range of various pesticides found in wax relative to their LD50s.

There is an average of 12.4 ug of various pesticides per gram of wax.

As for how all of these various pesticides can impact a hive...

It's not just in the wax.
 
#164 ·
There is an average of 12.4 ug of various pesticides per gram of wax.
Little bit more arithmetic:
12.4 ug = 12400 ng per 1 g of wax times 9 (9 gr of wax per frame) = 111600 divide by 2 (2 ng per bee) = 55800 divide by 2 (LD50) = 27900

One frame with waxed foundation contains enough pesticides to kill 27.8 thousand bees! I think, it was great discussion. It illustrates how "common sense" (first hand experience) sometime misleading - apparently, with llittle effort it is possible to find a lot of "stuff" even in the innocent wax... knowledge is the power. Good luck to those who is with waxed foundation. Sergey
 
#141 ·
So, using an average of 12.4 ug/g of total pesticides in wax, that's about 110 ug of pesticide per wax coated frame. Wax foundation would contain 100s of ug of total pesticide per sheet.

So, at least we have a baseline showing that we can eliminate milligram quantities of pesticides from hives by going foundationless.

Not bad at all.
 
#144 ·
Correction: After reading more than the abstract of the paper, I see that the LD50 for the high toxicity pesticides is less than or equal to two micrograms per bee, not nanograms, so that is why hives aren't completely dying out at the current pesticide residue levels...sorry, should have checked that myself instead of assuming the previous post was correct.

That being said, the issue of the paper, and the issue for beekeepers using contaminated wax, is "sub-lethal" effects, not lethal effects.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top