Wax

[prakel]

I have experimented with full sheets of foundation, triangles of foundation, and starter strips of both bought foundation and home made flat strips. The bees seem to prefer the strips or triangles and use more frames than when using full sheets of foundation, although they don't always draw the whole frame. It's as if the full sheets confine them to a smaller area of the hive, where they then use the whole frame. With starter strips or triangles they can access the whole area more easily, and choose to spread the brood nest sideways and in the upper two thirds of the box. This with large Jumbo Langstroth/Dadant frames.

Similarly, Alec Gale recommended (in the small magazine which he published in the thirties) that full sheets of foundation should be cut short of the sidebars to improve communication and comb drawing (different to cutting short of the bottom bar to get straight combs drawn).

[fatshark]

Which is often precisely what they do when drawing out a foundationless frame (even one like this with the middle wire not correctly centred) …

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[Beefever]

I suppose if you think about it, it is easier for bees to work an edge of wax as in a strip of foundation. Wax producing bees hang together, in festoons, to generate heat, secrete wax and build comb. If they are sandwiched between two sheets of foundation then they won’t be able to get the numbers in the same spot. Just a thought!