I think that it is too good to be true from the point of view of cost. Also, I have not found any information at all on how long these frames might last. They are primarlly plastic so forever seems out of the question. Even if they last five to ten years, I do not think the economics work. I have to crunch the numbers and see what I come up with (this -20 C/-4 F temperature here this morning will have me looking for something to do indoors).
The thing that I keep thinking of is that I figure I will have $12,000 - $15,000 CDN in hive equipment for my near future target of 100 hives. Adding these frames would cost $50,000 CDN plus shipping and modifying boxes thus nearly quintupling my hive equipment investment.
To put that into perspective a little more, if I can manage to achieve our current provincial average honey production of 93 lbs/hive at a current wholesale value of about $3/lb, I would have around $70,000 sitting out the field in anticipation of about $30,000 gross annual return. Even if I put in the extra work and retail my honey at $6-$7/lb, the numbers are still not close to working.
Yes, it would certainly be a big capital investment in anyone's language.
To some extent though, could this not be balanced against reduced labour costs in the longer term? And the need for a truck and lifting gear to load supers, transport to your honey shed, then hours of extracting and then having to take it all back to the hives so they can clean it out etc.
One other thing occurs to me; if you aren't destroying significant amounts of wax by uncapping and damaging comb which will then require repair by the bees, will you not get a greater honey yield by getting better utilisation of nectar that would otherwise have been used to make new wax? (One possible unintended consequence here could be a future shortage of cappings wax to make new foundation.
I guess if you've already got a significant investment in existing equipment, it would be bordering on foolish to abandon it for a new and as-yet, not totally proven technique.
I'm not commercial, never will be, I have an interest in 5 hives and that's all it will ever be. It's attractive to me as a hobbiest, for a number of reasons, not least of which being, as I now keep bees on a small suburban block, that I don't have to disturb my bees at the time of year they're at their tetchiest, to harvest the honey.
Whilst some would take home a message from the ad that you don't need to do any of that nasty getting inside hives thing, we all know that's not true but if possible, I'd prefer to limit most of my hive fettling in this suburban location to the Spring/early Summer when they're not so irritable. Even so, with just my 2 "home hives", it's a sizeable investment to get past the Domestic Finances Manager without her veto.