Dadant US plastic super frame 48 × 16 cm

01 · COMPATIBILITY

Dadant US is not Dadant Blatt

Both carry «Dadant» in the name and they are not interchangeable. This is a Dadant US super frame: 48 cm overall length, 16 cm high, with a straight 25 mm top bar.

The check that never fails is to measure a frame from your own super. If yours is 48 × 14.5 cm, this one is a centimetre and a half taller and will not go in; if the top bar is the French type rather than straight, it will not sit the same way either.

02 · ACCEPTANCE

Give them a coat of wax on first use

This is where your experience with plastic is decided. A pre-formed cell does not smell of wax, and a colony in no hurry can leave the frame untouched for weeks. We recommend brushing on a thin film of melted beeswax before the first use: it clearly improves the start.

It is not compulsory — they will draw them out anyway — but the timing is. Put them in during a nectar flow and with a strong colony, never in cold weather or with a thin population. With flow and bees to spare the plastic gets drawn; without them, not even wax will do it.

03 · HARVEST

Uncapping works the same, just don't rest the blade

If the frame is capped it has to be opened: a capped comb does not go into the extractor, plastic or wood. The uncapping fork is the comfortable tool here, because it works above the capping without resting on the base. With a knife, keep it hot — around 49 °C — and don't press it against the plastic: cold it demands force, and that force shaves the cell.

The extractor is where plastic pays off. Being a single piece, it does not rely on wiring that can give way, so it takes speeds that would cost a wired frame its comb.

04 · CLEANING

Cold and with a brush, never in the wax melter

Plastic is not cleaned like wood: scrape it cold and brush it with warm water. Do not put it in a steam wax melter or leave it in a solar melter: polypropylene softens with heat and a warped frame no longer sits properly in the super. Recycle wax from the cappings, not from the frame.

05 · BEFORE YOU BUY

This is an undrawn frame: the cells come pre-formed, but the comb is built by the colony.