Beehive: Painting and Naming

Warré hives are not usually painted. I suppose no paint goes with the natural in natural beekeeping. But our humidity is such that our outbuildings all grow a patina of green mold wherever they remain in the shade. For the service life of the hive, I decided to paint it.

At one time it was standard to paint beehives white. I read that was because white implied cleanliness in handling a food product. Nowadays any color goes and if you do an internet search for images of painted beehives you’re in for an eye candy treat. Even though I plan to keep my hive out of our scorching southern sun as much as possible, I decided to start with white as a base color because of our summer heat.

It was the naming that gave me a theme for painting. It’s funny because I’m not one to name things. I’ve never named a car or bicycle, our homestead doesn’t have a name, and neither do any of our chickens. Heck, I’m usually slow to name our goats. But for some reason I had no trouble naming our beehive. I got the idea after reading a professional beekeeper discuss his commercial hives. They were named according to location and number, and that made sense to me. Since I’m hoping to eventually have several hives, naming them seemed like a good idea. Our first beehive will be Honeysuckle and it turned out better than I thought.

I had hoped to have set it up outside by now, but it’s been pouring rain. Hopefully that will subside soon because bee arrival day is imminent.