Laurence Edwards spray-paints 100 polyhive brood boxes in four oil-based colours to create a camouflage finish that takes about 1.5 hours total. Oil-based paint chemically bonds to poly and lasts longer than water-based alternatives, while the distinctive look makes his hives recognizable and harder to steal.
Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Blackmans and Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. Today I'm going to show you once again how I paint my polyhives. I've got 100 Suyenti 14x12 brood boxes and I'm going to be painting them with these 4 colours: grey, brown, black, and green. I'll do a bit of a camouflage mix. I try and do it as quick as I possibly can, so I'll use 2 cans at a time. We'll put up a bit of a hyperlapse, show you how long it takes, and then we'll talk a little bit about why we use the spray paint and why we use the camouflage. Right, so we're all done. Took me about an hour and a half to do 100 boxes. I forgot to put gloves in the truck, so I had to do it without gloves, and I've got quite a lot of paint on my hands, so I'll give them a good scrub when I get home. Reason I do it is because I want to have a very distinctive look for my hives. Like I say, an hour and a half to do 100 boxes, it's just under kind of a minute per box. But what it ends up with is a really solid shell where the, the oil-based spray paint reacts with the poly, and then it kind of creates a really strong shell around the poly. Mm-hmm. So I found that it never deteriorates, unlike maybe a water-based paint would. It gives my hives a very distinctive look as well, so kind of I always know which hives are mine. Now that might sound a little bit silly, and it's not like we share a lot of the apiaries, but it's just, it's kind of a bit of a theft, an anti-theft measure. It'd be very, very difficult for someone to pass these hives off as their own, and obviously it's not like we know thieves, they can just take the frames out or burn everything else and just take the bees, but you just want to make it as difficult for them as possible. The other one is that obviously the kind of camouflage look really detracts from any unwanted attention as well. So I try and keep my apiaries always as far out of the way as possible. They're always kind of like hidden in woods and difficult places to find, but then they're quite difficult to see. So unless you actually knew they were there, you probably wouldn't kind of— they wouldn't catch your eye as you walk past them. So that's it for today's video. Again, I would say it was a quick video. It wasn't. It's taken me kind of nearly a couple of hours to get all of this done and set up. I need to go and wash as well, but I hope you're enjoying the videos. Like this one here, it's just kind of giving you a flavor of what I kind of get up to over the weekend. Couple of hours, paint up 100 brood boxes, get them ready for the season, and just a little video to show you kind of how I do that. So I hope you're enjoying the videos. Please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell so you're notified every time a new video comes up. If you've got any questions or comments or proposals for any product reviews, please let me know. And I'll see you next time. Bye.
