Decals or similar to place on hive to prevent drifting?

[MrGreenThumb]

Hello

Does anyone have a link that has decals or similar items that could be placed on to the front of hives to help prevent difting? If it comes down to it I might ask my oldest daughter to paint me some designs on the hives....she is a good artist.

thx

[Michael Bush]

I'm sure having an artist do it will make it more pleasing to you. I'm sure the bees won't care. :)

[PCM]

From the book; Hive Management by Richard E. Bonney
Pg. 74
" Marking hives with colors or designs is not a straightforward operation.
Bees recognize only a limited number of colors and a very limited number of shapes or designs. Anyone planning to use hive markings to aid bees in orientation would benefit from reviewing some of the literature .... [ See,
Bees;Their Vision, Chemical Sence, and language by Karl von Frisk.] "
which was published by Cornell University Press, Ithica, NY., 1971

Paint them what ever YOU like, but will the bees pay attention ? ;)

PCM

[beemandan]

I used some stencils and painted a number of designs on the front of some of mine. The girls seemed especially attracted to the green colored shapes. Young bees out on their maiden flights would often land on the painted shapes and then walk down the front of the hive into the entrance. Sometimes there would be quite a number of bees collected on those shapes while the rest of the hive front was unoccupied.
Do they reduce drift? Beats me.

[odfrank]

Tap Plastics has a bin of colored plexiglass scraps in various colors that can easily be sawed on a table saw and mounted with screws.

[Oldbee]

I think this would be an interesting,..."research project" for hobbyists or other beekeepers with just a few hives. I don't know about "decals". I have put [tacked] colored plastic plates by my hives. The problem with this and everything else you may think of to put by the hives is,.................DURABILITY! The plates deteriorated after the first season for me.

I saw a "fun",.. interesting sign painted on aluminum at a hardware store that said,................"Employees Only". Maybe i'll try that.

[Panhandle Bee man]

Is drifting a big problem for your hives? I never paid much attention to it, never had a big issue with it. If you are going to paint, stay with the primary colors of Red, Green, Yellow, blue. I understand why queen breeders mark their mating nucs, due to real close proximinty to each other, but I wonder why a backyard beekeeper would have much of an issue with it.

[bluegrass]

It's an interesting question Panhandle.

I don't worry about drifting among my hives.

I have seen a video somewhere where a feed source was marked with garden nomes and then the nomes moved a distance away and the bees went back to the nomes, passing over the food source.

I think that for those that are worried about drifting that marking the area around the hives would be better than painting hives. The painted hive bodies will probably end up needing to be switched around from time to time and every time a manipulation is done it stands a chance of confusing every bee in the yard.

I think they know the scent of their home and don't really need any visual cues other than what is already around them.

[Alex Cantacuzene]

Hi all, for some reason the Europeans use colored identifiers for their colonies. I am sure you have seen the photos. I use small, (maybe too small?) color tags on our hives. Ours are stained glass that I swiped from the wife's hobby bench. I don't think that they make much difference to the bees. The stained glass is durable, however, and since I have a super mentor, we can talk about the "Red Team" or the "Yellow Team" by phone when we are away from home. It makes a difference to us but does it to the bees......? See Photobucket.com and look for Habedere

[Robee]

I recently saw pictures of 3 hives that had little cutouts attatched to the front. They were sun, crecent moon, types. This was on the internet somewhere but I don't recall where. (I have seen so many bee pages lately) The beekeeper said it was to prevent drifting and also to decorate. They did look good for someones back yard.
Rob

[Hobie]

If you can find a copy of Karl von Frisch's "Bees, Their Vision, Chemical Senses, and Language" (horrid name for a very good and easy to read book) - he did a few experiments on the different colors and shapes bees could identify.