Hi Winker,
These are the lowest prices I ever heard of, congratulations, excellent job of your association but there was always 'economy' foundation at lower prices available from the suppliers and just that was the reason why we started to make our own.
Our concern was not that much the cost of wax but the quality and purity of the material offered to the bees. It's nice if you can tell your customers that the honey comes from 100% pure bees-wax cells free of chemicals and varroa treatment residues. Foundation made from Chinese wax has been found to contain up to 30% paraffin, big scandal in Germany last year...
Of course we started our beekeeping buying cheap foundation like almost everybody else, but noticed after some time that the bees did not always like it, we tried the more expensive certified residue tested bio-wax and found that it was drawn out quicker and with regular hexagonal cells even in the corners of the frame.
This African (!) bio-wax is still in circulation mixed with our Irish wax after more than 20 years. We sort out and melt lots of frames every year to keep the bees happy and let them not only produce the wax but give them a chance to make use of it. I hate to see thick layers of wax scales produced by young bees dropped down onto the insert under the mesh floor.
So if you have enough bees producing enough wax and if you have a steam wax-melter and a method and more equipment and enough time to melt and clear the wax then you can turn wax-blocks into stacks of sheets of unwired foundation which takes one minute per sheet. Next if you have enough beeks around you keeping Buckfast bees in Dadant hives using permanently wired frames then you will find that there is a demand for your handcrafted unwired Dadant brood foundation which you can sell for €2.00 per sheet because the beeks know that it takes them only one minute to fit the foundation into the frame.
Reiner
