Laurence Edwards shows how to paint poly beehives yourself with Rust-Oleum Quick Colour spray paint for about £5 per hive, saving roughly £30 each. Oil-based paint bonds better to polystyrene than the water-based paint manufacturers use, so it won't flake. Paint ten hives and you save over £250.
In this video, I'm going to show you how to save £30 on every single poly hive that you buy and why you're going to end up with a superior poly hive because of it. Super quick video today. I'm going to save you £30 on every single painted poly hive that you buy, and I'm going to save you that by showing you how to paint one yourself. But this isn't just a simple straightforward showing you how to paint a poly hive. You end up with a much superior product. If you look at the Abello website, the difference between the unpainted version and the painted version is around £30. This tin of paint here cost me £3. Okay, if you buy it in smaller quantities, let's call it £5. In this video, I'm going to show you how quickly you can paint that beehive, save yourself £25 every time, and at the end of the video, I'm going to tell you why you end up with a superior product to buying a pre-painted poly hive. So I've got a hive set up over there. Let's do some painting. 3 minutes, 39 seconds. I had to stop halfway through because I started off with half a can and it ran out. But I can guarantee you, with a can of Quick Colour like that, you'll be able to do any hive with one can with a little bit to spare. So for £5 for the can of spray paint and 3 minutes and 39 seconds of your time, You've saved yourself £30. Might not seem a lot. If you're buying yourself 10 hives though, and you use that strategy there, I've just saved you over £250 for only half an hour's work. £500 an hour is a good rate for anyone, especially someone who's just using a can of spray paint. Now I like to camouflage mine up a little bit. I don't go with a single color. I get in with 2 cans. I use black, gray, brown, and green. I'll stick the exact colors up if you do want to copy the colors, but I would recommend just go with a nice mix of neutral colors and you can get a really nice style. So now that I've saved you all that money, why is that poly hive superior to a pre-painted poly hive from most of the beekeeping manufacturers? Now, Damian won't mind me saying this, I've checked with him in advance, but when they're using paints to paint their beehives, they're only allowed to use water-based paints. They have to do lots of testing on it. They have to prove that it's not toxic. So the paint that they're using has to go through rigorous testing in order to be able to be used, be spray painted on poly. Does that leave you with the most hard-wearing paint that you can possibly get? No. Does it leave you with the safest paint that you can possibly get? Yes. However, using an oil-based spray paint like this, once it's fully dried, you're not spray painting any of the inside of the hive there. You're only doing the external surfaces, so the bees never ever come into contact with any of that unless you've got landing boards. But most of the hives don't have landing boards anyway. But the huge benefit that you're going to get from this, and I can tell you this from personal experience, is that when that oil-based paint reacts with a poly— and do, do a test first using the paint and the poly combination that you're going to use— it forms a complete plastic-like bond. It means you do not get any flaking at all. The only time you'll ever get any poly coming through is if you actually do any physical damage to it. This combination of bare high-density polystyrene and an oil-based paint like Quick Color from Rust-Oleum is so hardwearing and in my opinion, much superior to what you can buy off the shelf. So that's it for the video. I saved you £25. I've given you a superior beehive. And if you're interested in looking at some of the different Abello poly variants, check out this video where I review all 3.
