Hi all,
Now this is just our second year at this. We started 9 new hives this year all on plastic foundations. In the info that came with the foundation it said to mist the new foundation with sugar water when it is installed. We did that, and for what we know it worked they took to it ok. When we installed the 2nd deep we did it again, but some of the hives were slow to move up. We misted the new foundation once a week till they finally started building comb. Some of the colonies took about 2 weeks to start building, but once they did they took off. We also used the same practice on our honey supers. All of our honey supers are small frames with plastic foundations too. From what we have experienced (being our 2nd year and all) When they are ready they will go to it….. We did leave a frame feeder mixed 1:1 in all the hives with the new honey supers on to help draw out the comb. Some of the hives will take a gallon of feed every 3-4 days. Some don’t take any at all. We just figured if we have a bunch of sugar stored into the comb we will just feed it back to the hives this fall. We are just trying to get all of our frames drawn out, as fast as we can. Then when the Golden Rod comes on this fall we will have our Honey supers primed and ready for the bees to load up for us. I have not had any problem as far as robbing yet. We purchased 60 gal. of corn syrup this spring for $.14 a Lb. and figured if we had it we may as well use it.
Tim