The bee hives I built over the winter have been sitting in the workshop anxiously awaiting for our nucs to arrive.

A few days ago my wife asked me if we could paint one of them different colors, just for fun.

I've seen lots of other beekeepers paint their hives light colors, other than white (too dark of a color in full sun will increase the internal hive temperatures and make the bees work harder to keep it cool).

I decided since our nucs aren't arriving until next weekend, it was plenty of time to add some more paint and get them aired out again before the bees arrived.

I looked around the basement and found some old cans of light colored latex paint and got to work.



I've got several layers of white paint on both hives, and the hive on the right now has an extra layer of alternating colors.

You'll notice a very thin white between the top two colored boxes. That's actually my inner cover, that I decided not to paint. Actually, truthfully, I forgot about it until after I closed up the paint and washed the brushes...oh well!

 I was very tempted to go and repaint the remaining white hive a light tan color, but honestly, I've gotten a little bored with painting. 

The two hives pictured above will be at our house in our yard, and the third hive we built over the winter, not pictured here, will be at our parent's house.

Just last week (it must be something in the springtime weather) they painted over the white paint on their hive, and made it a camo color of shades of green and brown. I'm sorry I don't have any pictures of it yet, but it does look neat!

I'll be sure the grab pictures when our nucs arrive at the end of the month and we transfer them to the hives.

Now that I think about it, having the hives painted different colors (white, multicolored, and camo) should help identify/distinguish between them in our logs.