In this solo beekeeping update, Laurence Edwards revisits his North Wales colony about a week after installing plastic frames from framesandfeeders.com. He inspects both wax‑coated and pure plastic frames, noting that the bees have drawn comb and stored nectar and pollen, but no eggs, larvae, capped brood, or honey are present yet. Edwards observes that wax‑coated frames develop faster than pure plastic, though both are slower than traditional wooden frames with foundation. He highlights the energy cost of producing comb on thin wax coating, expresses mild disappointment at the slower brood development, and recommends waxing plastic frames for better performance. He concludes with a plan to provide another update in two weeks.
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So it's been about another week now since I put the plastic frames into my colony. Last time, no feeding, they were drawing them out nicely. In this video, I just want to give you another quick snapshot update to show you what it's like after about a week. I'm expecting to see more of the frames to be drawn out. I'm expecting to see eggs, hopefully some capped brood. Hopefully some of the frames have got a good amount of nectar, maybe some capped honey in them as well. Just going to give you that snapshot and let you know how they're getting on. So I'll get my bee suit on, let's go and check up on the plastic frames from framesandfeeders.com. Right, I'm so excited. Excited to get in and see what these frames are like. As I said before, good flow that's going on. We've not fed them. The queen has got access into them. Hopefully we're going to see them fully drawn out with some eggs, with some larva, capped brood, and maybe a frame of honey as well. Right, so I was genuinely thinking kind of 10 days since the last video they were going to be far more advanced than they actually are. I'll continue with the video though because I think it's probably a useful message to show you The difference between plastic wax-coated frames versus wooden frames with foundation. I know if I put wooden frames with foundation in here, they would have definitely been fully drawn out by now. But that's not to say that there's a major issue with this, but it's definitely a little bit slower. So this here is indicative of what I'm seeing across the frames. Not a huge amount of progress. The bees are drawing it out really, really nicely. No drone cells, really nicely drawn out, but they're not laying any eggs in it. The queen's not laying any eggs in it. They're just using it to store a little bit of pollen and mostly some nectar. But they are still a bit reluctant to go down into the corners and get everything drawn out. Some of the frames are looking great though, like that one there, pretty much all the way up. Still not down to the corners, but that's nearly drawn out that frame. And then the same on that side, a little bit more advanced, but still not taking it down to the corners yet, even though there's quite a substantial flow on, as you can see with the stored nectar that's going into these frames. So that's quite a nice frame there as well. You can see there is a lot of nectar coming into this. But because you're only putting that real thin coating of wax in there, the bees need a lot more energy in order to actually produce comb. The other side still not been fully drawn out. I'm not saying I'm disappointed, but I have to say I thought that we were gonna see eggs and brood and maybe some capped honey in here today. I'll continue to do the updates though. We've still got plenty of time left in the season here in North Wales. But I know everyone wants to see what happened to the frame that didn't have any wax on it. So not much progress, but look at it, they've drawn it out perfectly. Perfectly. I'm amazed at that. You know, I kind of thought that they were going to really cause a huge amount of mess on that. Same on that side, they've started to draw it out. This was a pure plastic frame with no wax on it, and they've even gone ahead and started to draw out the combs quite well. So I'm impressed with that, I have to say. But again, I'm not recommending not waxing them up. You can see from the difference that the ones that have been waxed perform considerably better. So there we go. No eggs, no larva, no capped brood, no capped honey. Not as much progress as I thought. I'll close it there. I'll do an update in another 2 weeks to show you how the bees are getting on.
