Archive Special: Hive Finishes with Kim (221)

Episode 221 – Archive Special: Hive Finishes with Kim

Jim Tew: Hey listeners, Jim Tew here. We're going to be gone for a short time, but while we're away, we hope you enjoy this short archive segment that we produced for you.

Kim Flottum: Jim, hey, I just went out and ordered a whole bunch of woodenware, it's going to be here in a couple three days. I got to go paint it or something. It's been so long since I've had new stuff. What's the best way to preserve this woodenware stuff? Because I know there's a lot of ways, and I just don't have much experience.

Jim: Yes, there are a lot of ways, I don't know that I'm qualified to cover all these either. You can really make your equipment characteristic of your bee operation. What you choose to do, to protect your equipment, is your own call, ultimately.

Kim: I tell you what, give me some ideas here. What's the best thing for me to do? Hi, I'm Kim Kim Flottum.

Jim: I'm Jim Tew.

Kim: Welcome to Honey Bee Obscura. Today we're going to talk about a bunch of ways to make your boxes and all your wooden gear last as long as possible.

Introduction: Welcome to Honey Bee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today podcast. Join Jim Tew, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the challenges of managing honeybees. Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honeybees. Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honeybees.

Jim: Kim, can I confess? I was working wood and tinkering with wood long before I was a beekeeper. In fact, one of the reasons I got into beekeeping all those years ago was you have a look at that and you naively say, "Oh, wow, I can build all that." For a while, I did build equipment.

Kim: I remember going to your garage, Jim, when it was full of all that woodworking equipment.

Jim: That stuff's all there. It's still there. It's just waiting for me to be young again and be energetic again and I'll pick it up. What I was going to say, though, is that because of that woodworking background, I've always had trouble, Kim, just painting bee equipment. The common thing to do is white paint, just good white latex paint. Is that what you use?

Kim: Tell me something. I go to one of the big box hardware stores and I look at the shelf and there's 37 different kinds of just white paint.

Jim: My dad had a paint supply business. I grew up selling paint, delivering paint. I did that paint matching colors before there were computers. You ask that question so innocently. My first thought is the cost of that material has become significant but only surpassed by the cost of labor. When you look at that shelf, if you get the low-end paint, you're probably going to have to be prepared to paint it more or have it fail more often. That's going to be your call. How often do you want to paint bee boxes? That'd be you.

Kim: I don't ever want to paint bee boxes. In the world of my beekeeping, painting isn't even on the list.

Jim: Let me think how to address that. I sound like I'm giving you advice. I sound like-- that I'm some kind of authority. No, that's not true. I'm a guy too who has to deal with painting boxes. I have this paint background. I have this woodworking background. Now as I've aged, I have a time restriction. I tend to just use- if I paint anything and I'm in a hurry, just use latex paint. If you're going to be using latex paint and I'm standing in front of that shelf you're talking about with all of those different variations, you can choose all those colors. For a while, I color-coded. I had supers, different colors and deeps, different colors. Have you tried anything like that?

Kim: I had some stuff that I used when I was building the chicken coop. I went to the hardware store and I said, "Give me the best outdoor paint you've got because it's going to be outdoor, outside, year-round." The guy sold me a can of paint and I had some of that left. That's the last stuff I used. It wasn't cheap. Do I need more than one coat? How many coats do I put on it?

You just mentioned different colors. I've seen people use different colors. Their honey supers are one color and their brood boxes are another color. Since everything I use is a medium that might help tell me, when I'm looking at a pile, what's in the box. There's cost differences and quality-- Then you see people who put natural varnish. What is that? How do they do that?

Jim: You're overwhelming me. That's a lot of thought material in three sentences, Kim. When I had the bee lab at Ohio State, I remember distinctly that deeps were gray and that mediums were dark royal blue and shallows were yellow. When you drive into the bee yard, you can just have a glimpse out there and tell exactly, there's two deeps and two shallows and whatever. That was very handy. It's particularly handy in the extracting room where you're trying to get frames back in the right boxes. That worked out well. That really worked out well.

The other thing that I as a consumer, not I as an advisor, finally have accepted is that the paint products are fairly safe now compared to what they were all those years ago. In the old lead paint days, you don't want to be eating that, getting that stuff. All that, from a consumer standpoint, is gone.

Kim, I went over to the local bee-- Bee supply place. [chuckles] I went over to the local paint store and, being old and old-fashioned, asked for oil paint to paint a metal door I had. They told me that they really didn't sell oil-based paint to consumers anymore. I stood there being an old guy. "What do you mean? I'm going to paint a metal door in latex?" My point is this paint product thing has quietly undergone a revelation in several ways. Number one, it's mostly going to be water-based, some kind of latex, water-based material that's very durable. It doesn't mean that it's going to wash off when it rains.

Secondly, Kim, it is bone-crushing expensive. I'm the guy who used to pay five cents for a short Coca-Cola and five cents for a box of Cracker Jacks. That is the mindset I had when paint at my dad's place was $5, $6 a gallon. To pay $60, $70 a gallon for paint, you stand there and try to catch your breath. When you're talking to beekeepers and you're saying, "This deep is going to last about seven years. How many coats am I going to put on it? What color? What product?" more and more and more, Kim, that becomes personal preferences.

Kim: There's another thing about painting. When you're driving along and you see five stacks of white boxes, you immediately know what they are.

Jim: I do.

Kim: That's good and bad because everybody else immediately knows what they are.

Jim: That's true.

Kim: The worst thing you can have in urban beekeeping is a stack of white boxes and a 17-year-old neighbor.

Jim: Kim, let's talk about that sometime. Not now, but let's talk about that sometime. What do you do when you pull into a bee yard and realize you've been vandalized? I understand that neighbor, that person, whatever. Those white bee boxes stand out, don't they?

Kim: They do. Do I want to not have white boxes? That's where I'm going here, is camouflage. I want them to disappear.

Jim: I can understand that. I don't usually paint white just because if you're going to put color on, I guess I want color. I haven't ever really done the camo look. Have you done that, where you actually camo the hives, really do make them go away?

Kim: I'll tell you what I've done. It's not anything. The boxes I've got out there that aren't painted, you don't see. I've got way too many that aren't painted. They're just gray and they blend into the rest of my yard. Good for camouflage, bad for the boxes lasting any length of time.

[music]

Betterbee: Ready to kick off your 2025 beekeeping season? Make sure you've got everything you need for spring at betterbee.com. Whether you're just starting out and need a complete hive kit, or you're a seasoned beekeeper looking to upgrade, Betterbee has you covered with top quality gear and expert support. Don't wait until the season's in full swing. Visit betterbee.com today and get prepped for a successful 2025.

Jim: The old literature said those boxes are going to last seven, eight years. I tried to write about it in Bee Culture. You start out with all this nice, crisp, pretty, standard equipment. Everything's sharp corners and good paint finishes, year passes, two, three years pass, that equipment's not so pristine. By the time you're to the fifth or sixth year, the corners, going to need some help, paint's begun to fail. It doesn't look all that good, but it's still usable.

I've often told beekeepers that your glory years are when your equipment is the newest. You started by saying you just got that equipment you'd ordered come in, so you're going to have that time frame there where everything is crisp and clean. Like me, that equipment's going to age and it won't look as good. Got to be maintained or let it go.

Kim: I got to figure this out because they're going to be here in a couple of days. We started talking about natural finishes. Do you do any of those? I don't know. Well, I don't even know natural finishes. What would work that would make it look like wood and not a white box, but still protect the wood?

Jim: I haven't done this, but I had a technician years ago who really put a lot of time in it. He had a hot rosin dip. I'm trying to say rosin, tree gum from mainly conifers or pines. They dipped that box in this hot rosin and it had a very natural look about it. I wouldn't recommend people do that. It was a lot of work, but it gave that finish that you wanted. You can stain, you can put stains on and do things like that and have that work out very well.

These are all just personal things. Through the years I've tried everything, every color, every paint. I will boldly say, Kim, and it flies in the face of what a lot of people do, but there's nothing really wrong with painting the inside of a beehive. That should bring some people out of the woodwork. In the old days, when that was lead-based paint, you didn't want to do that. Essentially now most consumer grade paint is not edible, but it's certainly safe as food handling surfaces. That would give you a better paint film if you're just night-and-day bonkers about protecting the wood.

If you want the best protection you can get and not paint the inside, some kind of finish on the outside, some kind of film finish, some kind of stain finish, and nothing on the inside, let the bees propolize it over.

Kim: I'm thinking a couple of things here as I'm listening to you. One of them is that there are people who dip their boxes in a certain kind of wax. I forget the wax, but I'm sure you can find that out somewhere. It's bordering on boiling. It's hot wax, so it's absorbed into the wood really fast.

Jim: Paraffin. It's hot paraffin.

Kim: Painting the inside of the box wood, that just goes against everything Tom Seeley and Marla Spivak say about bees putting propolis on the inside and surrounding their nest in that propolis envelope.

Jim: Now, stop. Stop, because you said this discussion was going to be on painting beehives, and I'm talking to you as a paint guy, that if you want the soundest paint finish, you can get on that box. No questions asked. What happens, Kim, I think it's common knowledge that moisture percolates from the inside through the wood and then causes the paint finish to fail from behind, not from the outside.

Kim: I've heard that.

Jim: Am I arguing with you about the propolis finish and all that kind of thing? No, not at all. Kim, if it comes down to it, do nothing. Just let the bees do their own thing. They'll propolize the parts of the hive that concerns them. You'll get your seven to eight years out of that box and it'll have a rustic camouflage look. In many cases, doing nothing is in fact a proper decision.

Kim: Yes, or I could just paint pretty pictures on them. What the hell.

Jim: You could do that. That's true. People do that. They look great. Kim, I don't know if we've caused more questions than we've answered here. This was a rambling discussion of the multiple things that can be done, but overall, do something that gives your bee yard, your stamp, your characteristic, makes it look like something that you're happy with. That's what's, most of the time, important about beekeeping is something you're happy with.

[music]

[00:14:38] [END OF AUDIO]