Laurence Edwards of Black Mountain Honey shows how to paint Suyenti poly brood boxes with oil-based spray paint instead of water-based masonry paint. Oil-based paint chemically bonds to poly and won't flake, while water-based paint does. He blends three or four colours in 30 seconds and sources cans from spraester.com at £2.50 each, working out to about 25p per box.
Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey, and today I'm going to show you how I paint my Suyenti poly brood boxes. Now, I buy a lot of boxes that come already painted, but I prefer to buy them without the paint finish. Now, the reason for that is that it means I get to choose what paint finish goes on them, and that's not necessarily to say I prefer them in any specific colour. It's more to choose the actual kind of quality of the paint and the finish And the big thing is how it actually bonds to the poly. So I do buy a lot of boxes from Abello. They come already painted and the finish on the paint on them is reasonably good, but it's a water-based paint that they use. I believe it's a masonry paint, so it doesn't actually physically bond with the poly. So what I prefer to use now is spray paint. Now I use that for a number of reasons, but the main one is that because it's an oil-based paint It dries relatively quickly, but it actually physically bonds with the poly. So when it gets wet, it doesn't flake or chip off. It kind of melts onto the poly as a bit of a plastic. Now, a few times when I've done this previously, you look at it after about maybe 30 or 40 seconds and it actually looks like it's reacting with the poly and starting to bubble. And don't worry about that. It is reacting with the poly and it's kind of forming a chemical bond. And then once that's fully dry, it's like a shell as opposed to like a paint finish. The other reason is I can kind of choose which colours I want. I like to put— I like to do a bit of a camouflage style on mine. A number of reasons for that. Again, it helps keeping them kind of out of the way. If I have them on roads, I don't want to draw any attention to my hives, so I try and keep them as inconspicuous as possible. And then the other one is that because I do the camouflage, it doesn't really matter which colours I use. I use a blend of about 3 or 4 different colors and just kind of go a bit crazy with the spray cans, and it kind of comes out all right. I'm not too fussed about getting into every nook and cranny of these either and making a perfect finish of it. All I want to do is get something onto the feeders— sorry, onto the boxes— that's going to protect the poly from the UV rays of the sun. That's all I'm trying to do here. Painting feeders is a completely different ball game. You need to stop the syrup leaking into the actual poly because then you can create issues with mold. So I'm going to show you how I do this. I forgot to mention the other big reason that I use spray cans is it's very quick. So have a look and see what you think. And that's it, the box is done. It really is that quick. Like, if you were to kind of zoom in, and I'll do a bit of a close-up on it in a bit, you might got a tiny bit there that's not got full coverage, but it's pretty good. It's good to go. Now, what I would normally do on these boxes is I put a second coat on. So you don't need to wait, you just get another color, and then I'm just kind of— all I'm doing here is just putting a little bit of an accent color on it. Now, that is just my own preference. It's purely just make it kind of blend in with the environment a little bit That's it, doesn't take any longer than 10 seconds. And that's pretty much my finished box. Now, I haven't got the paint with me normally. I normally put a little bit of a black accent on there as well, so I'll just use 2 cans as I go. But as you can see, that's probably taken me no longer than 30 seconds to paint the box. If you were to touch it now, it's a little bit tacky, and like I say, within about 30 seconds or a minute, you might start to see it bubble. I would recommend the paint that I use is Quick Colour. Now this is a very cheap generic paint. It's actually made by Rust-Oleum, so it's a good quality brand. Now where I buy this from is a company online called spraester.com. I was buying these and these were costing me kind of £3 or £4 a go, and then I looked into getting them cheaper and Spraester do them very cheap. So these are about £2.50 a can and they offer free delivery if you buy, I think, over £24 on their website. The big attraction though is that they're also VAT registered, so you get your VAT back on these. So it works out really cheap. I think if I'm doing stacks of maybe 10 of these boxes at a time, I'll go through maybe a can. So it's like 25p a box, which is very cheap. A cheap and cheerful way of painting your boxes. So I'll come in, cut in, and do a couple of close-ups and you'll see what I mean. It's not 100% full coverage, but for, for the purpose of just putting a coat on to protect it from the UV light. It serves its purpose. So, very quick video today. Thanks for watching. Please subscribe to the YouTube channel and like us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Thanks and bye. Thanks, Laurence.
