Can someone please explain the Foundationless hype to me?

[BayHighlandBees]

I said 'pesticides', as in dozens of them.

Right but the study everyone was talking about referred to miticides because those show up in higher levels and build up in the wax. Pesticides coming from the environment are at much lower concentrations. If we want to talk about those, then we shouldn't combine them with the same study that was discussing the concentrations of mite treatments building up in the comb.

If we want to get into outside pesticides like Neonics, in low doses actually act as a stimulant to bees (similar to nicotene to people) and will cause your bees to be more productive (in low doses). Unlike miticides they will slowly breakdown and decompose after 2 years. Do you have studies that show neonics building up in the wax to high levels?

[BayHighlandBees]

But, I think that the foragers in the treated wax comb group lasting an average of only 4 days rather than 8 days is a BIG issue.]

except that study was about hives that getting the old treatments every year at high doses. Its not about people starting out with plastic foundation and raising their bees with little or no treatments. I don't think the bees on plastic foundation will live less than the standard 8 days even if the 9 grams of wax used per frame came from beekeepers that were big dosers. The 2ng /bee limit doesn't apply to mite treatments like Coumaphos (which is listed in the non-toxic category of chemicals).

[WLC]

'Do you have studies that show neonics building up in the wax to high levels?'

Did you read both the Wu and the Mullins study? They both show neonics building up in the wax.

The imidacloprid concentrations are high.

While the published LD50s for many of the pesticides studied are old and have been called unreliable by many, they are 'too high' when newer studies (no citations provided) have examined their effects on Honeybees both on their own and when combined with potentiating agents (or synergistically w/ each other or with pathogens).

You really do get milligram per hive amounts of pesticides into your hive when wax foundation or waxed plastic frames are used.

9 ng/bee was the LD50 of one of the miticides when combined with a potentiating agent as described in the Mullins study.

It's the pesticide formulations that cause this over 100 fold increase in lethality above the published LD50. They determine LD50 for the active ingredient alone, not as a formulation.
That's one of the issues involved.

NB: they didn't account for known pesticide potentiators in either study.

[Daniel Y]

I first heard of foundation way back. and the reasons I heard for using it was that the bees draw comb faster and that it is better for passing frames through things like extractors. and that was it. I am not saying that is the only reason anyone has ever used it I am just saying it was the only thing I head anything about. I am not saying no one discovered other things they believe about it.

I am saying that what I believe foundation is really used for is to save the beekeeper time and work. it prevents losses and keeps the beekeeper from having to go into every hive and clean up messes in the comb. IT makes more durable comb and I have heard some say they believe that in increases production when you can just give the bees already drawn comb rather than empty frames. it takes to much wax for bees to make comb wasting honey produced. It is about the money or the labor. You can have these fringe arguments about every other reason you want to believe it is about. But with just a quick glimpse of the issue it is pretty obvious what it is about. Time effort labor and reliability. That overall is what foundation does. not a lot of people miss it and so you don't have to have endless debate about it doing that.

[Bush_84]

I will admit right away that I started reading the first page and noticed that this topic went all the way out to 10 and I stopped there. My only contribution at this point is the fact that if I buy foundation, my frames double in price. I had a hard enough time buying the frames when I can make Warre/TBH for pennies on the dollar compared to the Lang frames. People can argue about the actual benefits of going foundationless or if there are even any, but to me the cost of foundation is a big deal. I also like natural cell etc, but the cost can't be argued.

[deknow]

....to take an ld50 of an orally ingested substance and pretend that it has anything to.do.with an ld50 for what is in wax is pure ignorance, BS, and dishonesty....at least when those making such claims know better.

If I drink a.bottle of bleach, I will die. If I use a bottle of bleach in a normal manner, I will not.

If I breathe a.gallon of water, i will die. If I drink a gallon of water I wont.

If I stick my fingers into.an outlet, I will die....if I plug a lamp into an outlet I wont.

Deknow

[AJ Boss]

Can I Put a foundationless frame (undrawn) next to a drawn frame from foundation?

[WLC]

'to take an LD50 of an orally ingested substance and pretend that it has anything to.do.with an LD50 for what is in wax is pure ignorance, BS, and dishonesty....at least when those making such claims know better.'

Bees do use was in all kinds of ways, like making propolis (mouth parts are involved) or when they reform wax for making cells (they melt the wax with body heat, that's why the inside of a cell is round, not hex shaped).

The way that LD50s are determined is the source of the 'ignorance', 'BS' and 'Dishonesty'. Study after study has shown the LD50s for the same active ingredient to differ by orders of magnitude in tests on Honeybees. I've even seen a published LD50 for imidacloprid in the scientific literature at 1 ng/bee or 0.1ug/Kg (0.1ppb-at or below the LOD).

Yes, I do know better. The LD50 for an active ingredient is just a point on a distribution that differs by orders of magnitude depending on who is doing the testing and depending on the individual Honeybee colony.

Anyone can come up with an LD50, including for a caste of Honeybees because it has been proven to be such a subjective number, Especially when it comes to testing pesticides on Honeybees, that it's foolish to think of it as a constant.

LD50s were determined BY pesticide companies FOR pesticide companies. Honeybees just get in the way of that farce.

Dean, You're just tee'd off because I've pointed out that wax coated PF120s have a significant level of pesticide contamination.

Try to remember to tell folks to get PF120s UNWAXED.

PS-I'm a casualty myself. The PF120 bodies I added to my foundationless bodies have contaminated the experiment.

[Solomon Parker]

Can I Put a foundationless frame (undrawn) next to a drawn frame from foundation?

Yes.

[deknow]

Bees do use was in all kinds of ways, like making propolis (mouth parts are involved) or when they reform wax for making cells (they melt the wax with body heat, that's why the inside of a cell is round, not hex shaped).

...and all of this is the long way around stating that bees don't eat beeswax.

The way that LD50s are determined is the source of the 'ignorance', 'BS' and 'Dishonesty'.

Well, good thing you are at least citing them in good faith

Anyone can come up with an LD50, including for a caste of Honeybees because it has been proven to be such a subjective number, Especially when it comes to testing pesticides on Honeybees, that it's foolish to think of it as a constant.

errrr, ok. But when someone comes up with an LD50 for an ingested pesticide, usually it is expressed either as an acute or chronic (with some timeframe specified) dose. Even if they are not comprehensively determined, they are at least relevent to discuss....points on a continuum.

To take a number based on the amount a bee eats in feed and then apply it in any manner to what might be found in wax (that the bees are in contact with, work with, but don't eat)...especially given the llipophilic nature of most of the substances of concern, is dishonest when it comes from someone with the kinds of credentials you claim.

Dean, You're just tee'd off because I've pointed out that wax coated PF120s have a significant level of pesticide contamination.

...well, you've claimed that...but I'm far from convinced that you have started with a valid assumption of how much wax is on a coated pf100 series frame. How did you measure this again?

Try to remember to tell folks to get PF120s UNWAXED.

...what great advice....ever try to get bees to draw out unwaxed plastic frames? ...if the frames need to be waxed in order to work well (I think they do), where is the new beekeeper going to get uncontaminated wax? It is a fact that anyone using the recommended methods of applying wax to a plastic frame (paint roller seems to be the best way) is going to put on far more wax than is sprayed on to even the most oversprayed frame of PF100. Unless you can make a case that the wax a beekeeper is likely to buy is orders of magnitude less contaminated than what Mann Lake coats on the frame, I don't see an advantage.

I NEVER tell new beekeepers to buy unwaxed frames...quite the contrary. We certainly have wax we could use to coat frames, but because part of what we are trying to accomplish is good recommendations for beginners (and others), we've only purchased the waxed product....results from frames that I wax heavily with my own wax may not perform like frames that are sprayed with a light coating of the wax used by Mann Lake.

You do know that I filmed Maryann Frazier in 2008 talking about that plos one study (2 years before publication), posted the video online (with her permission), had over 1000 viewers in the first 2 weeks, and discussed it extensively here on beesource and on other forums?

Here is a post of mine from another forum, dated june 28, 2010...note that I use actual experience to advise what seems to be working best.

having regressed colonies using several methods, i think the best way is to use the Mann Lake PF100 series frames.

HSC takes too long to be accepted, and you really need to make it the only option for the bees...so, either you do a complete shakedown, or use a complicated method using queen excluders and trying to keep the bees from just raising a new queen outside the HSC.

Shaking down on to foundationless frames seems to bring them down to about 5.1mm....which I don't think is enough. Repeated shakedowns would probably solve this problem, but it takes a very long time.

SC foundation apparently doesn't get drawn out very well at first (I have not tried this approach myself, and rely on the observations of others). I'm also concerned about the contamination of the foundation and don't see this as enough of an improvement even if it did work well.

The Mann Lake frames (pf100 series NOT THE 500 SERIES) are 4.95mm cell size (0.002" larger than 4.9). The frames are cheap (much cheaper than HSC), they require no assembly, even if you get them coated with beeswax (which you should do unless you have your own known source of uncontaminated wax to coat them with yourself), there is so little wax present that the contamination isn't nearly as much as you can get from wax foundation. Our experience this year is that the bees take to them quite readily and draw them out perfectly. These could be fed into the middle of the broodnest a little at a time and get the regression happening at a reasonable pace...shaking a package onto this stuff is ideal, IMHO.

deknow

PS-I'm a casualty myself. The PF120 bodies I added to my foundationless bodies have contaminated the experiment.

I assume that means that you have measured the actual ammount of various pesticides in your foundationless combs, and compared this to the amount of the same pesticides found in the wax sprayed on the PF frames? You didn't? Really?

Based on your recent reactions to all kinds of old news (mercury in HFCS, HMF in HFCS, contamination of all available beeswax), I'm beginning to think that the "C" and the "L" in WLC stand for Chicken Little.

deknow

[BayHighlandBees]

Bees do use was in all kinds of ways, like making propolis (mouth parts are involved) or when they reform wax for making cells (they melt the wax with body heat, that's why the inside of a cell is round, not hex shaped).

It's a little bit of a gray area in that sometimes mouth parts are used in manipulating the wax, but they are not directly ingesting it and the thin wax coating lining the plastic frames is not the wax they are spending time on manipulating.

[jim lyon]

There is a small amount of "reforming" of wax that occurs in a hive but it is certainly quite small. Were that not the case once would only need to sprinkle a hand full of dry capping wax in when putting new foundation in a hive but of course bees will just carry it out the front of the hive like so much debris. The great majority of wax building only occurs with the stimulation of a honeyflow.

[WLC]

Dean:

This thread is about the hype over foundationless.

Obviously, one reason for the hype is that you don't need to deal with pesticide contaminants from 'God knows where' in your frames.

Foundationless wins over any other product in that regards.

"I assume that means that you have measured the actual ammount of various pesticides in your foundationless combs, and compared this to the amount of the same pesticides found in the wax sprayed on the PF frames? You didn't? Really?"

Neither did you Dean. Which, by the way, you should have done.

I took data from the Mullin paper that showed an average of 12.4 ug pesticide contaminants/g of wax comb.

It extrapolates out to milligrams per hive. That's even on PF120s. It's not rocket science.


I did look through your tome "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Beekeeping". You forgot to mention the issue w/ regards to certain plastic frame products.

As for the 'Chicken Little' Crack, I got you back with your own book!

Introducing contaminated wax into the hive is still a major problem in beekeeping, IMHO, and I doubt that it will be resolved if natural/treatment-free advocates won't even 'fess up' to the blunder of introducing it into their hives.

Foundationless does have a big 'leg up' in that reagards.

[deknow]

Dean:

This thread is about the hype over foundationless.

ok. I guess it's good you were able to get that off your chest, but I don't really see the relevance.

Obviously, one reason for the hype is that you don't need to deal with pesticide contaminants from 'God knows where' in your frames.

Yes. I'm not sure that was ever under debate. If you don't use foundation (or beeswax in general), then you won't introduce substances or pathogens that might be in that wax. I think this is pretty much self evident, and since the report from 2008, I haven't seen anyone offer any tests that they have wax that looks better.

"I assume that means that you have measured the actual ammount of various pesticides in your foundationless combs, and compared this to the amount of the same pesticides found in the wax sprayed on the PF frames? You didn't? Really?"

Neither did you Dean. Which, by the way, you should have done.

OK, so I'm a bad boy because I used my cunning and intuition to determine that there is much less wax sprayed onto a plastic frame (where there is $$$ in the manufacturer putting on as little as possible) than there is in a sheet of foundation that I will complain about if it is too thin to embed properly/easily.

But then again, I haven't been tossing numbers around and making claims.

I took data from the Mullin paper that showed an average of 12.4 ug pesticide contaminants/g of wax comb.

It extrapolates out to milligrams per hive. That's even on PF120s. It's not rocket science.

My admittedly basic math skills tell me that in order to do any of those calculations, you need to know how many grams are in a sheet of foundation, and how many grams are coated onto a pf120 frame. How many grams are on a pf100 frame? You don't know? Your calculator must have more buttons than mine.

I did look through your tome "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Beekeeping". You forgot to mention the issue w/ regards to certain plastic frame products.
As for the 'Chicken Little' Crack, I got you back with your own book!

I suppose I should have made this disclaimer: I am a temporal being. I strive to keep as informed as I can, but I have not been able to overcome the issue that I do not have an opinion of a product until _after_ I have tried it. Our book contract came rather suddenly, and we actually wrote what we were actually doing. We had heard about the PF series from Michael Bush, but not having experience with it, we decided not to include it. We did recommend HSC, as it was the best thing we had used at the time. Now, we feel that the PF series is far superior.
There was a brief mention of the PF series in the book, stating that some have had packages that were clearly shaken from SC comb, probably the PF series (as they are cheap, and people buy them for the price alone).

Next time I sign a book contract, I'll make sure to have a time machine (or at least a flux capacitor) in place before signing. I will make sure to address every issue of every product and device I have not used.

Introducing contaminated wax into the hive is still a major problem in beekeeping, IMHO, and I doubt that it will be resolved if natural/treatment-free advocates won't even 'fess up' to the blunder of introducing it into their hives.

I'm not sure what you think I'm not "fessing up" to?

Is the wax on the PF100 series contaminated? Undoubtedly.

Is there wax available from any source that isn't contaminated?
Probably not.

Do I think think, with the experience I have, that there is an advantage to using PF100's over foundationless when starting with a package of unknown origin, or a nuc with large cell comb?
Yes. It is what I do if I can, and it is what I recommend.

Foundationless does have a big 'leg up' in that reagards.

Yes.

deknow

[WLC]

"you need to know how many grams are in a sheet of foundation, and how many grams are coated onto a pf120 frame. How many grams are on a pf100 frame? You don't know? Your calculator must have more buttons than mine."

Sergey came up with the number of grams of wax used to coat a plastic frame.

He came in at 9 grams of wax per frame.

I really just need an order of magnitude to say that there are at least milligram quantities of pesticide in a hive with contaminated wax.

Yes, it could reach grams of mixed pesticides per hive because of variance.

Was that so hard Dean?

You didn't even have to take your shoes an socks off. No 'calculator' required.

[deknow]

...Sergey did the math. The number came from BayHighlandBees, who "read it on the internet".

If you read people talking about coating the plastic frames themselves, they are generally trying to get as much on as possible without filling the cell bottoms with a huge puddle.

When the manufacturer applies wax, they spray as thin a coat as possible. I've seen it melt in the sun, there isn't much on there. I would guess more like .5-1g per frame.

According to the Mann Lake catalog, 25lbs of wax foundation is roughly 175 sheets (deeps). 11200 grams, so 64 grams/sheet?

You can do all the math you want, but 9g of wax on a prewaxed PF frame is not believable....and even if it is, it's still 7X less wax than in a sheet of foundation.

deknow

[WLC]

"You can do all the math you want, but 9g of wax on a prewaxed PF frame is not believable....and even if it is, it's still 7X less wax than in a sheet of foundation."

Yes, there's alot more wax in a sheet of wax foundation than you would find applied to a plastic frame.

I would say that there's over a gram per side of wax applied to either a PF100 or 120.

Either someone gets to call up the folks who manufacture the PF 100/120 frames, or some one gets to melt the wax off of a PF 100/120 frame.

You can weight a sheet of wax foundation directly however.

I would compromise with 5g of wax per side of PF 120 and 7g of wax per side of the PF 100.

Maybe Mann Lake would take a suggestion to offer decontaminated wax foundation and coated plastic frames seriously?

They might listen to an author. Hint.

[Rick 1456]

When, and how, do you folks find the time to enjoy Beekeeping? Hey, I guess it all perspective.

[WLC]

When? Today.

The next project is combining some nucs.

Did some gardening too.

[deknow]

Maybe Mann Lake would take a suggestion to offer decontaminated wax foundation and coated plastic frames seriously?
They might listen to an author. Hint.

Errr, if I thought I could source clean wax, I would be manufacturing foundation commercially.

You will also note that a book that tells you how not too use foundation and how not to use treatments isn't so good for the beekeeping supply business. You will note that it isn't in any of the bee catalogs (even if it is the only beginners beekeeping book from a major publishing house).

But, I think, without weighing anything, without calling anyone, without melting any wax, exactly what I've been saying for a page or so....

There is much less wax in a coated pf frame than in a sheet of wax.

You don't know how much wax is on a PF frame, so all the math in the world won't tell you how much contamination could be on the PF frame. I guess you will have to turn to statistics to show how accurate your calculations are

deknow