[Deeptime]

I have 5 hives. I have one hive that is 6 frames drawn wax, 3 of which were filled with honey and 4 frames new Peirco. I started with the 4 frames of P on the outside to give the girls all the room they needed to reproduce on the 6 wax. last week I checked and P frames weren't touched but bees were crowded on wax foundation. Last nite I checked again and the P-foundation was not touched, but bee population is exploding, but totally crowded onto the wax faoundation. I forget to mention last week I sprayed the plastic with a very light mist of water/sugar/Honey-b-Healthy.
I know bees have no love for plastic. Also a 2nd hive has mixed wax/plastic and they had no trouble drawing out and filling the plastic.
Bees are cowded and I want to put on a medium, but am afriad the deep plastic will get totally by-passed.:s

Suggestions?

 

[Beeslave]

Place 1 of the undrawn pierco in between 2 frames of brood. When that is drawn do it again with another foundation. Keep repeating until all pierco are drawn. Feed the bees syrup to aid in the drawing of the frames.

 

[alpha6]

If you have that many bees in the box you can even place an empty between the center drawn ones and they will be enough to cover the brood. This will cause them to really pull out those frames fast as they don't like undrawn frames in the center.

 

[D Coates]

I second Alpha6 and add it also ensures that when they do draw it out they don't draw out the already drawn side (because it's got brood). If you put an undrawn frame between two drawn frames in a super they'll a lot of times redrawn the already drawn ones even deeper and ignore the undrawn one or do a really shallow job on the undrawn one.

 

[Zane]

I've had trouble w/ some drawing on plastic too. I agree w/ Alpha too. Also if you have time and some extra wax try brushing some melted wax lightly onto the frames. There has been lots of talk regarding brushing wax onto the frames in here so try a search. It seemed to work for me finaly. Good luck

 

[Deeptime]

ya, I was thinking to just drop a plastic in the middle of the brood, but I have waited as we have had pretty cold nites, and I didn't want to chill any brood.
Additionally, I forgot to mention I had shuffled frames so that I had capped honey in 1 and 10 with 2,3,8,9 the plastic. I think I'll try taking two of the plastic and moving them even more to the center area when nites warm up.

 

[propet12]

Mann Lake, in their catalog, recommends not mixing wax & plastic foundation in the same box. They'll draw out the wax first if given a choice.

 

[nc checkers]

If the above suggestions don't work I would take some wax drawn frames from the hive that drew it all out well. Shake the bees off and give them to the hive with un drawn plastic and give that plastic to the hive that will draw it out.
Some bees will stop drawing plastic and build swarm cells. You may have that going on now. They need more room.

 

[Deeptime]

ya, we're rainy, windy,coldish right now. I think as soon as it gets decent enough to have hive tops open for a little while, I think I consolidate the plastic in the hive that seems to not have problems drawing it out. Hope I don't swarm in the mean time!