Received my order of PF120's (Mann Lake) today. Having used the Dadant plastic 4.9 in trials and it not working so well, I can see why this design works so well for many. Don't like plastic frames, so I'm cutting off all the frames and putting the foundation into my wooden frames. Works just fine.
Used a piece of 3/4" plywood to set the frame on and run through the table saw leaving the bottom bar attached.
Benjamin, as far as I know, the Mann Lake plastic SC does not come in foundation only. Otherwise I would have ordered it for sure.
oblib, I've put this project away till winter since it's too late to use this year. I'm leaning towards either drilling two small holes in the bottom flange spaced 10" apart and using brads to fasten to bottom bar or trying the hot glue method.
This year is my first experience with PF-100s, although I've worked lots of commercial hives with other plastic frame brands.
The plastic material in the end bars is very thin and won't take much compression without crumpling. So, squeezing that last frame into a tight space will damage it. It's a common practice with propolis on wood frames.
i'm a first year beek and i have these frames. my bees seem to like them. my only complaint is the openings in the ends. bees get in them when i am removing frames. when i reinsert the frames they trapped in the openigs and die.
I have a couple dozen PF's and for the life of me can't get the bees to take to it. They crawl all over it but never build comb. I don't like the plastic frames either. They seem flimsy to me so I like your idea Barry. Maybe I need to paint them with some thicker wax.
I checkerboaded PF 120s and foundationless frames in a foundationles hive. Now, they've built in the PF 120s only and not the new foundationless frames.
It's been a dearth, and I'll be putting a feeder box on the hives shortly, but I was surprised.
By the way, I did see alot of DWV, and lost a bunch of nucs w/ the exception of one. No feeding or treatments.
The survivor is in a deep, and I'm going to baby it through for next spring.
It can get really hot on the roof, and quite frankly, while spring looked good, July and August knocked the heck out of em.
However, I am going to bring the survivors through on Ritecell.
Call it a hunch, but I like the way it performed. I will still keep working on the small cell/ foundationless in the meantime.
By the way. I've killed alot of bees trying this out.
I've got a bunch of these in my new hive, the bees do ok on them but I'm thinking of trying small cell foundation from Mann Lake to see how that goes. If anything, I will do as Barry has and chop the edges off and use wood frames. I got stung last time cuz a bee got in the recess and I put my finger over her and pulling on flexing plastic frames cuz it was bridged at the bottom was a pain.
I purchased 8-10 cases of PF-100 and PF120's, mainly because it was an inexpensive way to go compared to assembling my own wood frames like I normally do. I also wanted to try out some small cell frames. My bees tend to draw it out equally compared to other plastic cell foundation. I almost always coat on some of my additional melted wax to get them on the plastic quicker. Like any other type of foundation they will draw it out when they are ready to, based on the nectar flow. The problem for me is that the gap space between the bottom bar of one frame and the top bar of the next box. Someone posted that because of the size of the plastic top bar the bees tend to draw out bridge comb and ladder comb in this space. This presents a major problem when manipulating colonies, removing supers and putting the hives back together. You either have to take the time to scrape the wax and honey comb off the top and bottom bars or risk killing lots of bees setting the boxes back together. For me anyways my bees never wax-out that space between the supers with wood frames and plastic foundation. Perhaps this is a design flaw that Mann lake might look at, (i'm sure this is not just happening to me.) If it were just my honey supers it would not be a big deal but I used it a lot in my deep brood boxes and it ends up being quite a mess, in many cases. For me its back to all wood. I'm not a huge fan of plastic frames.
Michael Bush has some views on why that is. He says it's partly because of the thickness of the topbar and partly because the plastic frame gives no opportunity for drone comb. It is a downside.
I pulled a few undrawn ones out, one sat in my car, it bowed slightly, the comb section did, but I wouldn't say it's not usable anymore or anything though.
I had Michael Bush in my beeyard in July and we discussed it. I'm not so sure it concerns drone comb sizing though. Its much more of a spacing issue and related burr comb issue because of the frame size and construction. The simple solution would be for Mann Lake to just start selling their PF small cell foundation in sheets to install in wood frames right Barry..If I remember this weekend i'll bring my camera along and take a few pictures of this issue.
Barry here is a idea how to fasten the bottom of the foundation to the frame. Instead of buying pf120's whicch are for medium frames, you could buy some pf100's, which are for deep frames. Then use frames that have grooved top and bottom boards, and cut the foundation to fit in the medium frames. Let me know if this sounds like it would work, because I am thinking about trying it?
Instead of buying pf120's whicch are for medium frames, you could buy some pf100's, which are for deep frames. Then use frames that have grooved top and bottom boards, and cut the foundation to fit in the medium frames.
I like this idea. That is basically what I do now with my SC wax foundation as it is the deep size. Another advantage is it allows a space for drone cells at the bottom. Good idea!
I am at this late time in the season drawing out a lot of plastic frames mann lake deeps and mediums. I started thirty splits on used equipment and every one of them had AFB confirmed by Beltsville. I just shook out the last of them last week! Some of the frames which I always order waxless because I have clean wax and they are cheaper, did not get coated. The bees put in this predicament are drawing the frames out very well. They are brooding up as fast as they can and I have high hopes of getting them numerically strong enough a nd with enough stores to winter. Pierco frames are better quality and I really wish they were small cell. If that was the case, I would never buy wood again.
I think plastic would make more sense in terms of disease too. You could just bleach them instead of burning your investment. I just notice my bees do not work the plastic frames as well as natural foundation. The edges of the frames always taper down to unused portions. I did notice something that could be useful though. For whatever reason some frames had a circular area(s) removed (I'm assuming the previous owner did it), perhaps queen cell cut outs or maybe the bees did it, I don't know. They're about the size of a quarter or so. In almost every one of them, the bees have built queen cups in them and they fit perfectly. I'm thinking it would be interesting to see if you could get queens built that way, insert a plastic frame with rows of circular cutouts outs on both sides and see if they build a bunch of queen cups in them. Now only if someone would make queencups that could lock onto plastic frames like legos.......
The foundation can be cut from the PF frames and the resulting panel is exact size of a regular foundation. The top and bottom only needs to have the raised cell portion cut back about 3/16 of an inch by running it over the table saw set that much above the table. 4 passes and the top and bottom is reduced to the width of the slot and can be popped into a regular wooden frame. I just did a few free hand but suggest a feather board of some sort to keep the foundation against the fence as it is a bit wibbly once the frame is lost. A fine tooth plywood blade for your table saw would be nice when cutting off the frame. I may try the band saw when doing the rest.
Thanks crofter I have a couple of frames ordered to practice on then I plan on regressing my hives this spring. Now I have to find the easiest way to get the brads out of my frames from when I nailed the paint sticks in them, for foundationless.
I cut out 120 PF frames on Sunday, they turned out nice. I cut the foundation out on the table saw, and then cut the embossed honey comb off the edges with a router. I bought medium PFs and the foundation popped right into grooved top, grooved bottom medium frames. The wax coating on the PF foundation made it want to stick to the tables of the saw and router. They sell it without the wax coating, and its cheaper, but then you have to pay the shipping so its not really worth it. I also cut about a inch of the bottom corners at a 45, for the queen to pass through. Steve
If you trim PF120's to remove all four frame edges, the remaining, PF120 foundation will fit in medium frames with grooved Top and Bottom Bars (sometimes I find that I need to shave a 1/8" wide strips both top and bottom, removing some of the cell walls, so the foundation will, more easily fit in the wooden frame grooves), this is how I do mine.
Thanks for that info. I must have missed it when I looked. I only found the PH120. I wanted just foundation sheets if I could find them otherwise this was my next choice. I really need deep foundation for my experiment.
An update on these frames. As life has a way of going it's own direction, my plans for this spring trying out these frames got derailed due to traveling. But, I was able to hand them off to my neighbor and help her get started in beekeeping. We did a hive inspection last week and added the third brood chamber. The frames we pulled out, the comb looked real nice. I was very pleased with the results. I plan to take some pictures and do some measuring in the next week and will post them here.
Looks like I will start converting over to this frame/foundation setup.
We still have a bunch of PF100's that we'll cut in half and mount into wooden frames as well. If results are good, it will be cheaper to do this.
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