r/Beekeeping Wiki

Joys and sorrows of plastic foundation

You will often hear that bees just will not use plastic foundation. Or that “bees will only use -insert color here- plastic”. The truth is: bees won’t draw well on plastic, only wax. But… if the plastic is lightly coated in wax, they won’t know the difference.

Most name brand frames/foundation will work just fine right out of the box. You can often find premium foundation that will be “double” or “triple” coated for an increase in price. These generally work very well. It is often the very inexpensive foundation that bees have trouble with or foundation that has been sitting for years and is no longer fresh/tacky.

Poorly coated plastic foundation

Foundation with good wax coating

When foundation is old or poorly coated, you etiher get spotty drawn comb, no drawn comb at all or bees will make lobes of wax that hang off of the comb and are not attached to the foundation.

Poorly drawn comb on under-waxed plastic foundation

I guess I have to throw out my crappy foundation?

Relax. There is a simple fix. All you really have to do is add wax to the foundation. You can do so in a number of ways:

• Melt down some wax in a double boiler or a crock pot on the lowest setting. (If you use your mate’s best pans instead of buying some garage sale pans, you’re going to be sleeping with your bees.) Lightly paint the melted wax on frames using a paint roller or a foam brush.
• A quick and dirty method would be just to take a chunk of wax and rub it across the embossed plastic. The fine amount this leaves behind is usually just enough to get them working.
• If the bees have already drawn wonky comb over the foundation, use your hive tool to mash the comb into the foundation to, for all intents and purposes, coat it in fresh wax. Just make sure you don’t mash the queen.