# Does hive color really matter?



## jimbo3 (Jun 7, 2015)

Will the bees really get confused if I use different colors, or the same colors for two or more hives? I'd like to paint my next hive box with whatever color paint I had from the last one.


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## Slow Drone (Apr 19, 2014)

No they won't get confused.


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## johnbeejohn (Jun 30, 2013)

It doesn't matter that much I have different colors from every time I have built equipment I buy what ever miss tints are at sheerwin Williams or Lowe's 
Different colors will help fresh mated queens find there way back they say


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## jimbo3 (Jun 7, 2015)

Okay, thanks everyone. I have extra paint from the last hive body I painted, so I'll go with that.


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## frustrateddrone (Jan 31, 2015)

Speaking of Hive Color....... Interesting you say this. No it doesn't matter. I watched a bee production with hives made of baskets from cow dung twigs and mud. FOrgot the name of it. SOmewhere in Europe though. All these bee hives are the same color, material and size. All the bees find the bee hives when returning. Now here is the interesting thing. When an inspection for numbers is found to be weak they take a basket and take it off the shelf and put it on a strong bee hive location basically swaping them out. The theory is the strong bee hive has more numbers. Weak to strong location helps them out. I found that interesting that this actually did work for them.


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## Groundhwg (Jan 28, 2016)

Does color matter, only to the beekeeper.


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## AR Beekeeper (Sep 25, 2008)

The only thing I have found concerning the color of the hive is that darker colors warm the interior of the hives 8 to 12 degrees more than white hives.


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## Jim_in_PA (May 17, 2016)

Before my lovely partner in crime got started, we did a bit of reading on this vary subject and the consensus was that color doesn't matter. Bees do have the ability to recognize open and closed shapes, but it doesn't seem that hive color is a consideration. We chose to use a color that helps our hives blend into our landscaping since we're in a suburban/rural area and the cost of a gallon of paint in a color of our choosing really wasn't a substantial expense. For Beeks who are putting out a large number of hives or have no care about color, "ooops" paint from the home center is a great choice and darn cheap. Do what works for you.


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## psfred (Jul 16, 2011)

Bees can't see red, so it appears black, but other than that, they don't care.

I don't use dark colors to avoid excess heat in the hive in the summer, but other than that use whatever you want. Mis-tint paint at the big box stores is cheap (usually $5 a gallon, maybe $10) and premium paint is premium paint even if it's a strange color. 

Currently mine are a funky orange, milk chocolate brown, a bluish gray, and dark green, not quite John Deere green. I also have some rust colored paint I have not used yet, it's sorta dark. Maybe that will get used for the new windows in the pole barn when I get them made this summer.

Peter


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## Phoebee (Jan 29, 2014)

We paint all our hives the same color, about what Jim in PA shows in his picture above, a nice neutral almond exterior latex. We then apply shapes spray-painted in various colors. One of our first was a worn out circular saw blade. Now we tend to use large plastic letters.

Frankly, the letters are more for our benefit than the bees ... we use them to distinguish the hives in our notes. However, the bees do seem to pay attention to these when orienting.

Bees have a demonstrated ability to "count" up to 4, which is not bad for a bug (most mammals can recognize numbers of marks in comparable tests up to about 5). They can also distinguish left versus right and above versus below. These tests are generally done with feeder markings, not hive markings, but presumably they can learn to identify certain patterns, and this may help reduce drifting.

That ability to count to four and distinguish left and right may be their main way to identify hives. Long rows of hives tend to experience drift of population to the ends of the rows. If you put ten hives in a row, the bees may lose count. But if you are like us and have 3 in a row on a hive stand, that's not a challenge for these smart little insects.


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## sakhoney (Apr 3, 2016)

Not to the bees - but it does in the sun - dark colors will make the hive hotter


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## crmauch (Mar 3, 2016)

psfred said:


> ... Mis-tint paint at the big box stores is cheap (usually $5 a gallon, maybe $10) and premium paint is premium paint even if it's a strange color.
> 
> Currently mine are a funky orange, milk chocolate brown, a bluish gray, and dark green, not quite John Deere green. I also have some rust colored paint I have not used yet, it's sorta dark. Maybe that will get used for the new windows in the pole barn when I get them made this summer.


For those of you using mis-tinted paint are you buying outdoor paint or any paint and not worrying about whether in or outdoor?


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## bee bud (Mar 15, 2016)

I get the messed up samples at depot, they discount them to .50 and are int/ext. each one covers about 4 boxes depending on how many coats.
Lowe's samples around me all seem to be interior only.


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## Phoebee (Jan 29, 2014)

Lack of exterior oops paint is why we settled on a standard exterior gloss almond beige sold in quart cans, a practical amount for our small apiary. I never could score exterior oops paint at either HD or Lowes, and for as little as we needed it was not worth it to hold out.

Larger operations may have other ideas. A large apiary in our area appears to use nothing but oops paint from the look of their hives. They have a whole spectrum of pastel colored supers, and no white.

I suspect you can get by with it if you use a good undercoat. If the goal is function, not appearance, the undercoating is what does the work. We use Kilz.


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## Ravenseye (Apr 2, 2006)

I use (pretty much) all mediums and all my equipment is white....like my house. But when I feed, I use gallon pail feeders surrounded by old deep bodies. Those, I paint a different color. From a distance, it's easy to see which colonies are being fed. The deeps are painted red....it was ooops paint.


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