What Color to Paint Hives?

[BWrangler]

Hello Harlon and Everyone,

I just finished painting my tbh. I ended up painting both the inside and outside surfaces. I haven't painted the inside of my hives before other than the bottom board.

My thinking was the tbh hive and essentially all the equipment will be in the yard all the time with little chance to refurbish, so I painted all the surfaces. The hive is essentially one unit with seperate bottom, etc.

Just Some Thoughts

Dennis
Ps Harlon would you be willing to post some pictures of your TBH on beesource. I would like to see it.

[Michael Bush]

I've always thought painting the inside was a bad idea. Paint doesn't seem like something I would line a food container with, and that's what I think of a hive as. Also I didn't think the bees would like it. Also, I figure the wood acts like a bit of a moistier flywheel. Soaking it up and giving it off. I have painted the insides with FGMO just so the bees couldn't attach things as well. I suppose that kind of messes with tme moistier effect.

Let us know how it works out.

[harlond]

Dennis, I don't have a digital camera, but evidently I can snailmail pictures to Barry for posting, so I'll try to take some pics and send them to him. It ain't nothing fancy, and who knows whether the bees will like it.

[BWrangler]

Hello Harlon,

My tbh is the most basic possible. Part of the design concept. Looking forward to the shots.

Thanks
Dennis

[Jorge]

Other than with cedar shingle or plastic lined houses, how many of us would leave our own homes unpainted? There is a good reason to paint and that is to prevent the on and off absorption of moisture, which does 2 things: 1) it leads to rot, 2) it produces swelling (when moist) and shrinking (when dry). This puts a lot of strain on the joints, as well as warping of the wood, and thus a shorter life for a house, a piece of furniture, a hive.
The inside is all but insulated after a season or so by the bees propolizing and by waxing the surfaces as they walk on them with "dirty" feet.
Jorge

[Jorge]

About painting with copper based paints. To me it is a bad idea. One treatment for some parasitic diseases in fish such as tropical acquarium fishes, is the application for 5 days of a 0.15ppm solution of copper. This will lead to a total of just 0.75ppm of copper added. This is not an extremely high concentration in my opinion.
Now, everyone who has or had a fish tank where a parasitic infection was treated with this method will attest to the observation that all invertebrates (snails, for example) in there are dead. Copper is poisonous to invertebrates, and bees ARE INVERTEBRATES.
They might be a little nore resistant than snails, the painted copper may not initially come off as easily (until it starts pealing), but I would worry.

Jorge