I hope this is the last question fro today's inspection, but I cannot guarantee it. We have a nuc that will not move up from the first deep. I moved a frame of brood up into the second deep, but this did nothave the intended result. The brood hatched, and the bees filled the frame with honey. They have not, however, seen fit to fill or even draw any of the other frames. I will point out that the nuc came on small cell wired foundation, and the frames in the upper deep which are being ignored are pf-100 plastic. Again, what should I do? It seems that the mixing of the PF series with wax foundation or foundationless yields odd results. Should I put in frames of starter strips? I need this nuc to build up before winter, and they will have serious issues on one deep.
Mixing wood and plastic frames can be disasterous. Bees, when given the choice, will usually work the wood frames (whether with or without foundation) and leave the plastic alone. Putting a super of plastic above a box of wood frames means the bees will often choose to swarm, as if crowded, than work the plastic frames/foundation.
The tricks to getting bees to work plastic are, in progressive order, as follows:
1. Air the plastic out asap, the longer the better, buy plastic in the fall for the spring and summer use. Bees hate that new plastic smell.
2. Spray the foundation area with simple syrup.
3. Coating the wax foundation with an additional coat of wax, the manufactures don't apply enough of a wax coating during manufacturing.
4. Spray the foundation with added wax with simple syrup.
5. Go back to wood.
Don't mix, I just had a swarm leave a 5 frame deep nuc because, IMO, it had plastic frames in it. Again, IMO, either start them on plastic and keep them on plastic or use only wooden ware.