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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!
 
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#183 ·
'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.
 
#184 ·
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.
 
#185 ·
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.
 
#186 ·
....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
 
#188 ·
'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.
 
#190 ·
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:rolleyes:

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
 
#192 ·
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.
 
#193 ·
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.
 
#194 ·
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
 
#195 ·
"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.
 
#196 ·
...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
 
#204 · (Edited)
...Sergey did the math. The number came from BayHighlandBees, who "read it on the internet"....
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
I just did a calculation since BayHighlandBees made it wrong just 30 times... From HIS data, it is 9 gram per frame. I do not use foundation, so I have no idea if it reasonable or not. Similarly, I also did other calculations based on posted in THIS thread data (LD50 etc). Of coarse, it is not pretended to be absolute, it just gives a raw estimate what expect in worse scenario. LD50 is always very worse scenario - it was used to estimate effect of nuclear explosion on Japanese people (US wanted more casualties). All attempts to diminish this thread findings are just pure indication how some people biased and just ignorant... It is fine with me, because I already distill all useful stuff from this discussion.

By the way. If somebody wanted to use the brain, there is simple math problem to solve: you have a size of the frame (LxH in cm) and thickness of wax you want to apply (h in cm). It is very easy to calculate the volume of the wax necessary to cover one side V=LxHxh, times 2 = Volume of wax needed for one frame. Than one could google to get the wax density (D g/cm^3). Than multiply volume by density = VxD. Note - do not repeat BayHighlandBees mistake - all science is METRIC! do not use in or oz! If you use cm you will have grams at the end. Great thread. I personally have a lot of fun AND it is very informative.

Deknow - many thanks for acknowledging that BayHighlandBees provided numbers, which leads to 9g/foundation wax coat content. Now BayHighlandBees is trying to diminish his own findings and talking about miniscules amount of wax per foundation. It is inconsistency, not good. As for credentials - Solomon Parker I believe objected that somebody told at this thread that he has a credentials in environmental sciences. Somehow it was sounded that poor guy did something wrong by disclosing his (great) credentials... So, I felt, I do not want to make anybody uncomfortable with my identity. But, if you are insisting, I have nothing to hide: I have Masters in animal and human physiology (including bees),one PhD in Immunology, and one PhD in Molecular Biology. I am a research professor at UCLA Medical School. I have no specific education in environmental sciences, but, yes, it was a part of my Bachelor general education. Education helped me to understand (and solve) the problem, but I am presenting here as an amateur bee-enthusiast. I do not consider myself a beekeeper. So, hello everybody. Sergey
 
#197 ·
"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.
 
#200 ·
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
 
#202 ·
Rick 1456... I'm with you. After 14 pages of hits and misses, it seemes foundation contains contaminates, who would have thought it. It also seemes foundationless is more difficult to move and extract, who would have thought it. You are not going to change someone's mind that is already made up, I don't care how many facts, charts, graphs, studies, you present. Do either of you think you are going to convert the other?? Dueling facts that go nowhere.

In the words of Rodney King..... "can't we just all get along??????"

cchoganjr
 
#203 ·
I don't really care what other people do. I do however, find it somewhat upsetting when someone claims a bunch of "scientist" credentials (especially when they are secret and unverifiable credentials) gets their panties in a twist every time they read about something they didn't know before...then tries to scare everyone else by making up numbers and repeating them over and over in order to make them sound true.

Yes, WLC, you know between 1-10g? Why? Because someone read "9g" on the internet, and I said my best guess was between .5-1g? Good thing you vet your data before plugging it into the old math machine....or are you citing real data that you found somewhere? I didn't think so.

deknow
 
#205 ·
Dean:

I have melted beeswax before. I do know how a ml of melted wax flows. I've also examined PF 120s. There's easily 1 gram of beeswax per side of a PF 120.

What amazes me is that you won't even acknowledge 1 gram of beeswax per side of a PF 120.

I can understand why both you and the other treatment-free/small cell gurus might be annoyed at the thought that you're putting significant amounts of pesticides into your hives by using wax coated small cell frames.

That's why someone contemplating keeping treatment/chemical-free hives should consider the foundationless approach.

It's a litle tricky, but you can avoid a major pitfall (I've fallen in myself) and get off to a clean start that way.

When comparing foundationless/natural comb to small cell, I'd say that the wax contamination issue tips the balance in favor of foundationless.

:)
 
#213 ·
That would be the trend predicted from the Wu study.

The Mullin study has other data on contaminants in foundation. If you did a meta analysis of the 2 studies, replotted the adjusted cumulative distributions, then you could generate an actual estimate of the average number of forager days lost.

No, kidding.

For now, we can say that you would lose forager productivity.
 
#221 ·
For now, we can say that you would lose forager productivity.
you could if you were reusing the entire comb from the study for a new hive; however, in this thread we're talking about new foundation with a thin coating of wax (not reusing the entire comb). And its worth noting that the recycled wax on new frames isn't frankenwax from a crazy 'nuke and soak the hive with miticide' experimental study).
 
#215 ·
'JUst jumping in here w/ a question. Does anyone think that foundationless comb is free of contamination or just less contaminated?'

Basically, yes.

Honeybees are known to be excellent surrogates for examining environmental pollutants of many different types. They just seem to end up back in the hive somewhere. Even radioisotopes.
 
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