Dadant US Deep Plastic Foundation

01 · COMPATIBILITY

The clear opening decides, not the top bar

The foundation sits inside the frame, in the grooves, and never touches the lugs of the top bar: the centimetre between a Dadant US (48 cm) and a Dadant Blatt (47 cm) is in that lug, not in the opening the sheet goes into. It is made for the 48 × 30 cm Dadant brood frame. Measure yours before ordering: it needs 405 mm clear between the side bars and roughly 278 mm from groove to groove. It will not go into a 482 × 285 mm frame.

02 · FITTING

A groove top and bottom, and no wire in the frame

The sheet is 4 mm thick with the relief, and its top and bottom edges are thinner: they snap into the groove of the top bar and the bottom bar, no wire, no eyelets and nothing to tension. The trade-off is that the frame must have both grooves and be free of wire, and a good share of wooden frames are sold already wired from the factory.

03 · WAXING

It ships unwaxed, and that step is not optional

This reference is the manufacturer's unwaxed version. Before it goes into the hive, give it a coat of wax on both faces (dipped in molten wax at 60-70 °C or with a roller, as the manufacturer directs) until the relief is veiled: that is what triggers drawing. On bare plastic the colony hesitates or skips the frame, and acceptance also depends on population and nectar coming in.

04 · SERVICE LIFE

Scrape it and wash it, but keep it out of the wax melter

The black background shows eggs and larvae without tilting the frame against the light, and the manufacturer positions it for extracting at speeds that punish a comb built on wax foundation. At the end of the season it is scraped and washed cold, ready to wax again. What it will not take is heat: in a steam wax melter, a melting tank or strong sun the plastic warps.

05 · BEFORE YOU BUY

It is the foundation only: no frame, no wax, no wire. Nor is it small cell or drone cell — 5.6 mm is worker cell, a shade above the 5.4 mm of ordinary wax foundation, and cell size is no substitute for monitoring or for authorised varroa treatments. And although the plastic is not wax moth food, the comb built on top of it is: store a drawn frame like any other.