Why You Don’t Need to Add Wax to Premier Foundation
Beekeeper Marlene Boernsen uncaps a super frame in Ocheyedan, Iowa.
A popular practice among beekeepers is to apply an extra layer of wax to their plastic foundation.
The theory is that bees will be more attracted to plastic foundation that has been heavily coated in beeswax — i.e., the more wax, the more likely the bees will adopt the foundation.
This is a good and sound theory, but it doesn’t apply directly to Premier Foundation.
Let’s explore three reasons why not.
1. Adding more wax may lower the overall quality of the wax coat.
There is no purer beeswax available than the wax used to cap honey cells, also known as capping wax.
Capping wax is clean because it has spent little time in the hive, meaning bees have not trampled on it repeatedly.
“Beeswax is an environmental sponge,” explains Premier Bee Products Co-Founder Jeff Johnson.
“This wax is made up predominantly of a class of organic molecules called esters. These esters tend to absorb everything they come in contact with.”
As bees forage, they unintentionally collect chemicals and disperse them across the comb as they walk about. Many of these chemicals are toxic, namely such biocides as Roundup and others. One study found that bees are actually attracted to herbicides and fungicides, which can have negative effects on honeybee health.
(Sidenote: This is another reason why it’s important to rotate your foundation on a regular basis.)
“Beeswax is an environmental sponge.”
All this to say, it’s important to coat plastic foundation in pure, unadulterated beeswax.
Knowing this, Premier Foundation is coated in 100% pure, rendered capping wax from A.H. Meyer & Sons — the world leaders in beeswax rendering. The company’s proprietary process achieves a contaminant- and paraffin-free capping wax while keeping its strong, natural scent intact.
You may be tempted to think that the purest wax available is harvested straight from your hive. This could be true, but there are many variables that could negatively impact hive health which are hard to test for. These could range from a number of environmental or genetic factors.
By using pure, rendered capping wax on your foundation, you can keep confidently knowing that your hive will not be introduced to foreign toxins from the wax base.
2. Adding more wax may require additional labor by bees.
It seems counterintuitive that more wax would hurt, not help.
But to better understand how more wax may require additional labor by bees, let’s consider the worker bee’s duty of cleaning comb cells.
We know that over time, bees shed skins and secrete wax scales that can build up inside individual cells. To clear room for new eggs, young workers fetch their mops and start cleaning these cells out.
What can we learn from this behavior? Bees instinctually know their optimal cell dimensions.
Simply put, too much wax crowds their space and results in them needing to remove it or reject wax-filled cells altogether.
A honeybee’s anatomy is not designed for any sort of drilling, cutting, or excising of wax. As wax is an expensive product for the bee to build, she builds only as much as the colony needs. Having a cell that is completely filled with wax means that the colony is unable to use that cell productively.
Many experiments have been done to see what amount of wax the bees prefer, and it’s generally true that more wax equates to better adoption of plastic foundation.
A related behavior is seen in children: If they were constantly fed candy, they would probably gravitate towards it over vegetables, even if it wasn’t better for their bodies.
In a similar vein, your bees may gravitate towards the foundation with the most wax due to its scent, but too much wax may increase the strain on bees to remove wax-filled cells and wax-thickened walls.
It may seem like you are giving your bees a head start on their comb, but in reality they are spending precious energy fitting the foundation to their exact specifications.
All in all, the less strain on a colony, the better.
3. Adding more wax is a waste of resources!
The good news is that Premier Foundation comes in all quantities of wax — single- (Heavy), double- (Extra Heavy), and triple-coated (Triple).
Our single-coated foundation is deemed “Heavy Wax” because each coat receives a generous amount. The proof is in the drippings.
Adding wax is a messy job, and it requires time and resources that could likely be better used elsewhere.
If you want to apply more wax for extra assurance that your bees will adopt the foundation, we encourage you to explore Extra Heavy-Waxed or Triple-Waxed Premier Foundation to guarantee your bees are getting the purest, healthiest wax available.
Our point remains: It is usually a waste of time and resources to add wax to Premier Foundation, and may in fact put your bees at a disadvantage.
We have seen that the contents of new, fresh-from-the-hive wax are largely unknown since they have not been tested for foreign pathogens.
However, even under the assumption that the new wax is perfectly pure, it may still be unnecessary to go through the time-consuming process of melting and rolling an additional layer of wax onto Premier Foundation.
Nevertheless, we at Premier Bee Products know there is no universal way to keep bees.
That’s why we provide beekeepers with options. Whether it’s Unwaxed, Heavy-Waxed, Extra Heavy-Waxed, or Triple-Waxed, your bees will thank you for having the perfect base upon which to draw their comb.