# Painting Bee Hives?



## warrior (Nov 21, 2005)

Groundhwg said:


> I had posted a question regarding hives stands and several people had included pictures of how their hives were placed. I noticed that when the hives were close together many folks had painted their hives different colors or drawn designs on front of the hives i.e. one hive yellow the next one blue and the next one yellow. Yet others who had hundreds of hives side by side were just painted white or the natural wood. Do you need to paint the hive different colors for the bee to find their way back to their home?


No, bees have a form of internal GPS that is based on the angle of the sun combined with an internal clock to measure distance (time traveled and to compensate for the earth's rotation/angle of sun). It's actually more complicated but that's what it boils down to.

However bees also recognize basic geometric patterns and some colors and some studies have shown painting hives with differing patterns or colors does reduce drifting in high density apiaries.

Basically the internal GPS gets the foragers from point A (hive) to point B (place to forage) and back to point A. The fine details of geometric pattern or color pinpoint location (either hive or flower) at either end of the trip and this doesn't even take into consideration pheromones and other inputs. Consider it built in redundancies and fail safes.


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## B52EW (Jun 3, 2013)

My bees navigate to their hives based on the paint color that was on the "oops" table at the local big box store. I also have some (cypress) boxes that have gone unpainted (mostly when the paint store guys are being too proficient).


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## StacieM (Dec 13, 2012)

Mine are painted based on what paint I had available or could get cheap. I also have some eco-wood treated hives that look unpainted. I have no idea if the color plays a role in them knowing their hive, so I don't really take it in to consideration.


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## waspslayer (Jan 3, 2010)

What colors are bees able to see? I have heard many colors appear as black to honeybees.


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## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

Visual navigation of honeybees has been extensively studied since the days of Von Frisch. A really good paper is this one: https://www.researchgate.net/profil...f_the_hive/links/02e7e5320beb975f64000000.pdf

In short, the paper, *Evidence for the honeybee’s place knowledge in the vicinity of the hive* shows bees home on their hive using three distinct knowledge systems. 1) the distal system which is based on an angle to the sun's azimuth and distance to landscape horizon. 2) a peripheral system (operating at a distance of about 30 meters) 3) a focal orientation that cues from a distance of less than one-meter.

The focal system is visually based and operates on very short distances. If hive entrances are less than 1 meter apart, visual cues - color and high contrast design will encourage entrance finding. In the peripheral realm 2-30 meters, the orientation is partly visual. At that distance, bee eye resolution would not detect fine patterns, but can discriminate between colors (or high contrast against a background). 

Bees learn some colors faster than others -- violet is learned quickly, blue-green far less. Bees do not have red color vision (would be seen indistinguishable from grey in their vision). When bees have been trained with 3 visits on a color, they remember the color for the rest of their life (with greater than 95% fidelity). Violet can be learned in a single trial.

The bee field of vision is larger than ours, so a bland white hive against a dark green treeline forms a memorable pattern for a bee at both peripheral and focal (<1 m) distance. 

In my own practice with mating nucs (where the successful return of a naive queen to a small undistinguished box is of economic concern) I use entrances painted with a diagonal split between two colors, and scatter the nucs in a semi circle separated by >1 distance.

Placing the hives in a semi-circle is my own obsession -- in the azimuth-to-horizon navigation system -- facing the hives to a different horizon should improve navigation accuracy more than if the hives are placed in a straight line against an identical horizon.

(factoids about color learning based on the book, The Honey Bee by James L. and Carol G. Gould. Very useful reference).


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## wvbeeguy (Feb 20, 2011)

Dr Tom Seeley stated on hives closer than 50m (about everyones) drifting was determined to be up to 30%- so different colors, shapes painted near entrance , etc may help with drifting


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## Ravenseye (Apr 2, 2006)

You don't "need" to but there's evidence (as mentioned) that various differentiators may help reduce drifting. I've always wanted to test that but never found the time. What I have noticed is how good the bees are at basic identification. All my hives are white and if I'm wearing a bee jacket and I squat down at either end of a row of hives on a nice sunny day, it only takes a few minutes for a cloud of bees to circle me. I've become "the last hive on the left" sort of and I'm pretty certain that those circling bees simply went to the last hive looking object at that end of the row. It's kind of cool.


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## whiskers (Aug 28, 2011)

I've read that bees have two different types of cells that may be able to detect magnetic fields and may use magnetism as a navigational aid.
Bill


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## psfred (Jul 16, 2011)

According to published research, bees can count to three pretty reliably, so it's probably a good idea to limit the number of hives close together to groups of three to reduce drift -- the loaded up bees will get "lost" and try to get in to the end hives in a row. Loaded bees are almost always accepted by the guard bees coming in, so the end of the row hives end up with more bees than the rest.

Color coding, different heights, and different decorations painted on the hives help. Bees can recognize flowers, faces, and simple designs, so contrasting geometric designs on the hives will help them return to the correct hive.

they also do not see red at all, it appears to be grey or black to them. 

Peter


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## tazke (Mar 23, 2015)

Great advice here but think the most important thing may not have been addressed. Ask you wife what she thinks!! After using some oops paint, I now may have 6 white hives left. I go to the store, I bring home two gallons with $5 written on top. She goes, comes home with 4 different "pretty" colors, no $5 on the top of the can. 

I use a airless painter, works great. To change colors I just move the auction tube to the next can. In about two or three boxes it blends and changes to the new color.


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## MJC417 (Jul 26, 2008)

All my hives are less than a foot apart and the same color. When the wind picks up and a quick summer storm rolls in, the foragers come streaming back to their hives. It doesn't look like they are confused at all as to which hive to go in. Bees may drift some, but it isn't an issue with my hives.


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