I noticed excess plastic ribbon or beads on the ends of the deep, stationary half-cells. In some cases, the bead covers 30% of the area of the cell. This bead was only on the lower half of the frames, and it looks like a manufacturing defect. All of my frames had this problem on both sides. See example pictures here:
Yes, I think they are manufacturing defects. Mine have them too, just haven’t got round to photographing them yet. It looks like melted plastic as the machine draws away from forming the cells.
I do think this will be a problem for the bees to get past and draw the wax comb out properly.
I’m going to photograph mine and send to the Flow people. They were very good with replacing damaged parts of my hive.
I agree with @Cowgirl, send your photos to faults at honey flow.com (take out the spaces between faults and com, and change the at to @ - I am just trying to avoid spambots detecting the email address). Include your order number and the email address you used when placing your original order, so that they can track down you information. I believe that they have a stash of replacements, so you should get one fairly fast. The gaps you show in the frame look acceptable to me, but you may as well ask. If the wires seem loose, there is a video on how to tighten them, but no need to do this if they are sending out replacement frames.
Thanks everyone! I’ve emailed the flow team, but I was posting here just to make that it was actually a manufacturing defect and something worth bothering the (very busy) flow team about.
My new frames arrived today! There are similar defects, but the number and size of the defects is much, much less. (0.5mm protrusions instead of 5-6 mm protrusions, and they cover 0.5% of the frame, not 80% of the frame) I don’t think these small extra bits of plastic will get in the way of the bee’s use of the frames. Thanks Flow!
