so today i'm doing a really quick review a comparison actually we're not going to see these
with actual bees on them because they were just delivered today and it is december the first so
there's two foundations for your beehives for the deeps and for mediums and others but you know i've
been using acorn for a long time i've counted the cells we've had really good luck with them here
but there's a new foundation on the market and it's called premiere so people have been writing
me especially over the past week telling me to please do a comparison and asking me which one
has more cells are the cell walls thinner on the premier foundation than they are on others
so that's an easy thing to check so what did i do bottom myself i didn't contact the companies i
didn't ask for freebies i paid full price because i want to get them just like any other consumer
and look them over you're looking at the premier foundation right here and you can see that they've
sprayed wax all over it i purchased the heavy waxed versions and these of course for the deep
frame so we can see that the embossing for those cell walls goes all the way to the top and bottom
edge so this is the premiere and you can also see that the surface is pretty rugged looking
so maybe the bees will like it it's got pretty good coverage of wax on it they say that their
wax is superior because it's made from cap wax which we all know cap wax is the best
acorn long time use here edge to edge it doesn't have the cells going all the way to the edge and
i'll explain why that's not important in just a minute this is also a heavy waxed acorn foundation
so the question was are the cells the same size yeah they are actually and another thing
that people were asking about does premiere have more cells on their foundation than the
acorn frame foundations do and the answer to that is they're pretty much on the money
sell to sell in fact there are actually more cells available to the bees for drawing out on
the acorn frames than there are on the premiere and that's kind of a surprise but we're looking
at them really close here because i just want you to see the differences in how they're made
and here's the stack these are the heavy wax acorn frames here you can see there's lots
of extra wax floating around on it i think their wax application process to the plastic foundation
is different i think the premiere looks like it's sprayed on in a in another way which gives
it kind of this very rough course surface appearance and whereas the acorn seems to
be pretty smooth almost as if they're dipped but i'm going to guess that those are sprayed as well
they're both supposed to be food grade plastic acorn states that about theirs
and i'm guessing that premier also has food grade plastic because it's going in your hive
and the bees are going to draw it out so again we can't put this in our hives yet this year
so um i'm going to make speculations about that but for now
all i'm going to tell you is look once they're in the frames you can't use those bottom two rows
and you can't use the top two rows if you notice too they're a little bit distorted
so i'm going to forecast that the bees won't use it all the way to the edge possibly
but we will count for comparison purposes the complete rows of cells on the face of each deep
foundation and the ones that we're featuring here we just randomly pulled from the stacks
and i didn't look for one that had more wax or less wax or
whatever else you might think of but there's a difference in the physical appearance
but the cell structure looks pretty much the same acorn is definitely much smoother in appearance
and you can see that for yourself but there again acorn has smooth edges top and bottom knowing that
you're going to be putting them in the grooves of your wooden frames we bought wooden frames
with the acorn foundation or you can buy the acorn foundation by itself without the frames
when i went to the premier website i was not able to get wooden frames with the premier
foundation so i used my own frames 3520 to 3564 cells on each side of the acorn foundation
and that means cells that are available to the bees to draw them out 81 cells per row 44 rows
now when we look at the premier foundation look again at how that top row gets cut off because
it's pushed into that groove we end up with three thousand four hundred and forty four to three
thousand four hundred and eighty three cells per side so premiere actually comes out a little under
acorn and available cells forty three to forty five or forty to forty three point five usable
rows 80 to 81 cells per row and that's how we came up with it we counted the cells
so let's call them equal there really isn't that big a difference in the number of cells so
what else is different about them how about the price premier extra heavy wax is 1.99
each and i bought 20 and it was 14.35 shipping so that adds to it acorn heavy wax two dollars and
two cents free shipping on amazon but let's say you wanted them in the wooden frames i also bought
20 with frames already installed from better b that cost me 114 dollars so that's 5.70
per frame including shipping now the other discussion is one's thinner than the other
one's more flexible than the other that's true the premier foundation is thinner and flexes easier
so i guess the discussion there would be that it would be easier to put it into your
wooden frames and get them lined up in those grooves and this is of course the acorn one i
was wondering if there wouldn't be a little audible difference there if they're thicker
they should have a lower frequency if they're thinner they should have a higher frequency
and we're looking at the wax here again on both of them but uh acorn is definitely thicker and
more rigid premiere is thinner more flexible so if you're having troubles getting your
foundation into your wooden frames the premiere frames are going to go in much easier
so that's pretty much all there's to say about it i'm going to forecast that the bees are going to
use them both equally i think it's going to come down to personal preference and i don't think
that the number of cells on each foundation frame will make that much of a difference so it may just
come down to the cost so if you're ordering them shipping them picking them up in person it might
just come down to which one is going to save you money and i think that the bees are going to use
both acorn or premier equally they're both heavily loaded with wax some more wax on foundation the
better it is for the bees and the easier they're going to draw that out and start using them
i've got a great history with acorn they're fantastic i've compared them to man lake and
pierco and others and found them to be superior and now i'm going to say acorn and premiere are
pretty much shoulder to shoulder thanks for watching i hope you found this video helpful