Painting/Protecting the bee hives

As a late thought, I found that barn wood paint works well. Before our winter dropped in on us I painted several boxes in white and they look very well, but before I painted them, I spackled holes and primered the boxes and then applied 2 coats of white. It took me all of 3 days to get it all done.

Really, no need to paint/treat the inside.

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I agree.
I have cedar hives, untreated they have aged to a lovely silver grey

I plan on treating my hive with pure tung oil–will I need to mix it with citrus solvent first?

You certainly don’t “need” to, but I get a more even first coat with a 1:1 citrus:tung mixture, just for the first coat. If you are interested in doing that, here is the food grade version I used - pretty decent price too! :slightly_smiling:
http://tinyurl.com/zqk7fsj

I used this Pure Tung, but there are lots of others to choose from:
http://tinyurl.com/owtnf64

Just make sure it is pure - probably better NOT to buy it in Home Depot… :wink:

Dawn

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Hi Adagna

I did it as you mentioned. You can see pics etc at this post: Tung oil treatment for Flow Hives

Best wishes

Using a petroleum product would be toxic to the bees.

I have a question re Tung oil. It is Pure Tung Oil. The supplier suggest thinning it down. Is this advisable? And if so what would I thin it with?

You can, but you don’t need to. I would suggest food grade Citrus Solvent (Citrus Turpene) if you want to dilute it. If you can’t get that, just apply it undiluted.

Dawn

Thanks for your comments. I went with using the Tung Oil straight and NOT thinning it. It was fine, easy to paint on and it looks and smells amazing.

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Really happy it worked out for you. I prefer the astringent smell of western red cedar to the nutty smell of Tung Oil, but perhaps I am odd in that! :blush: However, I have to agree, the appearance is fabulous.

Dawn

I decided to have my hive hot dipped in wax to protect them. Here’s a small video of getting my flow hive boxes dipped a weekend or 2 ago

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That is quite an impressive setup.

Yes it is. it would hold up quite well i.e. the wax on the boxes that is. I was first concern with how close it was to his house but looking at the over all set up, I became confident that it was all ok. You don’t see it in the photos, but fire extinguishers were quite close as well several of them.

Brad also agreed to be my mentor. Going out this weekend to help him with different things with his bees. Really excited about helping

Nice video. You say that you scraped the excess off the hive doors, but did you have to clean up the SBB at all? It looks great, hope you are happy with it!

Dawn

only needed to take a hairdryer to the screen bottom board to melt some of the wax on the screen. And the only reason the door had excess wax on it, is because it was floating as you can probably see in one part of the video, unlike all the other pieces they were totally submerged.

If it holds up as all indications say it will. As well as others with past experience says it will hold up, I will be fully happy with it I think it looks great.

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Do not use creosote, very bad stuff. Wondered about pure orange oil?

You can use food-grade pure orange oil (also known as Citrus Solvent, Citrus Turpene and D-Limonene) to dilute Tung Oil 1:1, but it is not a good sealant without the Tung.

Hi Everyone,

I’ve got a full set of cedar 10 frame Langstroth coming in soon. Been reading all this preservative Tung Oil stuff. It does sound like a safe environmently friendly mix with citrus oil solvents.

My question: does anyone know approximately how long this Tung Oil preservative will last before revolting? Not sure the bees will be happy with new coat of oil couple years or ??? (When) down the line. I’ll used oils on turned wood bowls n cutting boards but have NO EXPERIENCE outdoor longevity ! I am aware different conditions like sun, rain, temperature, etc will vary the time. But anyone have a A.W.A.G. ( a wild ASS guess ) appro length if well coated with couple to several layers/coats ???

Just thot I might toss that question in here n see if anyone has any lengthy experience with this product other than what’s on the can or container labels. :smiley:.

Thanks for any info,

Gerald up State side ( Washington State )

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The folks @beethinking have been using it for a while. I only started using it last year, when I got my first western red cedar (WRC) hives. My understanding is that you need to put a new coating on after a couple of years. If you used neat oil, you could probably do this leaving the hive in place (not moving the bees out), as it is very low toxicity and doesn’t smell strong outside. It only takes about 20 mins to coat a whole hive, if you are slow like me, and you could do it in a bee suit and veil! :smile:

However, hopefully Matt will advise. Of course if the surface needed any sanding, I would take the box off to do that.

The nice thing about WRC is that you really don’t have to seal it at all. It is very rot resistant. The Tung Oil just preserves the red appearance, otherwise the wood turns a silvery color.

Dawn