paint inside of supers

[tazz6584]

I have the opportunity to take 25 boards that are 7.5" x14'. The question I have is the boards are already painted . They are painted on both sides. They are new and will be free. Lots of medium supers for me. Is there anything wrong with using them. Should i try to remove the paint from one side or leave them alone?

[Ravenseye]

I have some painted on the inside and the bees were fine with them. Unless you think the paint might have a toxin in it, I'd say go for it.

[Bens-Bees]

Leave the paint alone. My first hive I painted the inside and the bees haven't seemed to notice at all. So the bees don't really care about the paint, but paint stripper will probably bother them, and it's not worth the effort to sand it off. If they have been recently painted, just let the paint dry well before putting them to use.

[honeyman46408]

Yeh go for it I painted my first hives inside and out and that was 10 years ago and the bees dont care but some will say different.

Cheap is good free is better

[Bens-Bees]

Some would say different, but I doubt they'd do any different in this situation. By my figuring... this'll make 50+ mediums... I doubt they'd turn it down for the paint, or bother to remove it for that matter.

[Ian]

unless the paint is leaded, but, I really doubt that

[Specialkayme]

My old mentor told me not to paint the inside because the bees don't like the smell (or something) so they will end up chewing the paint off the wood. From what he told me, it won't hurt the bees, or disrupt them, but they will take time to chew away the paint, when you would want them to make you honey.

But I have never painted the inside, so I don't have first hand experience. If everyone else says it works fine I would just go for it. It's free, and it won't hurt them.

[waynesgarden]

I've been building hive bodies out of Windsor One wood trim cutoffs that I cart home from the scrap bins at work. Comes primed with three coats acrylic paint that the girls seem to have no problems with. No signs of them working at removing it.

They don't seem to mind the color and I don't mind that it's free!

Wayne

[beepowers]

The bees will cover the paint with a thin, thin, thin, layer of propolis in any case. So, unless you have a planer machine and want to skim off the paint, I'd say let it be.

Incidentally, there is some marginal evidence that varroa somehow grow better in areas with an atmosphere laced with Voluable Organic Solids, which is are certainly present in paint.

[tazz6584]

Thanks for the responses i wanted to make sure before I made the supers. I did not want to waste alot of time and find out the bees would not use them.

[Scott J.]

I know a beekeeper that pours paint into a pan and then dips all four sides of the boxes to paint them. this gets everything painted in short order. He has been doing this since the 60's and has alot of his original boxes in use. He runs about 1500 hives.

[Ian]

interesting,

Do you know how he keeps the paint from beading?

[Scott J.]

He would prime the boxes using one gallon of mineral spirts and a gallon of oil paint. The top coat was oil paint with about 10% mineral spirits. After dipping the boxes he would cross stack them to dry. It didn't look like he was too worried about any drips. I suppose that a person could run a roller around the boxes to pick up the excess if they were looking for the perfect paint job too.

I have dipped bottom boards with the priming solution this way and then hung them to drip dry. I did not have much it the way of runs.