Ours has logos on both front and back and is just cut into the wood and doesn’t cut all the way thru, so is just decorative.
A lot of people have used Tung oil, and have had no problems. I just wanted to make sure you had all the info 
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Thank you for that. Much appreciated
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Tung oil application in progress. I didn’t read the instructions properly the first time, and probably did too thin an application, so have remedied that after reading when I went to clean the brush. It really was soaking everything in. I hope I have done the right thing. I basically painted it all over and then realized you were supposed to keep it wet with oil for 30mins before you wiped off the excess. I was thinking that there really was no excess at all. Then I went over it and kept it wet for a further 20mins. Hoping that will be ok. Will repeat in a couple of days. My bees will be ready soon. I hope that the turps will disperse quickly for me, as otherwise I might be in a spot of trouble as @JeffH saidhe would have bees ready for me soon. I dont want to keep him waiting once they are ready for their new home. Can’t wait. Some seeped down the inside. I’ve wiped that away as best I can. Hoping it won’t be too much of a problem.
(upload://6ZvdWLs2urjhMCFR6sWZkTJvPvO.jpeg)
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Turpentine? Uh oh… 
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I did use the citric turpentine. So not a complete screw up
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Don’t leave me hanging @Dawn_SD! Please tell me that the citric one I got was the right one? I didn’t mean to be confusing. Turpene sounded so similar to turpentine in my head I thought of it as the same, minus the toxicity. Fingers crossed ive done the right thing
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Ah, now that is different. Yes, citric terpene is fine 
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Hi Belinda. Just take your time. It’ll give your bees a chance to get some nice frames of brood happening. Cheers.
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Thanks Jeff. With everything else happening in my life, it takes me awhile to get anything done, so I’ll just do my best to be ready when your bees are. I’m going great guns in my gardens at the moment and I really look forward to how the bees will help with pollination.
No worries Bella, some bees are ready now, but I have other colonies making new queens, I don’t have any particular colony ear marked for you. If the current new ones get taken, there’ll be more in the not too distant future.
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Meant to get back to you last week Jeff, after the rain put off our plans to come see you. I will give you a call tomorrow afternoon. It’s my first week back at work since my last baby was born, so I have been a bit busy, but would still love to come get some bees off you if you think it isn’t too late in the season. I can see large trees full of bloom nearby from our balcony. :).
Hi Bella, it wouldn’t be too late in the season where I am. There’s still a lot of season to go. All this recent rain could have a positive effect in the coming months. I’m looking forward to a honey flow in June.
I checked on my observation hive yesterday afternoon & got a shock to see how much they’d done, considering all of the rain we had. I haven’t looked inside any of the queen raising nucs, I’m sure that they’ll be similar.
I’m heading down to my main bee sight shortly, not for the bees but to gather some cow manure & drain the fuel in my new chain saw. A couple of trees fell over near my hives, so I’ll cut them until the fuel runs out.
I found a couple of hives knocked over by the cows the other day, they sat through all that rain, not a pretty sight.
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Maybe you could use your chainsaw to make a log fence around the hives? 
Hi Dawn, that would be a good idea. The two that got knocked over doubled the total amount over quite a few years. The cows keep the grass down. I wonder if some bees started buzzing a cow, which made it panic a bit, knocking the hives over in the process. I was lucky that the brood in either hive was unscathed, the beetles didn’t start laying in the brood, however 7 honey frames were shb affected. The rest were robbed out or untouched & able to be reused. I think one queen got killed because there was plenty of upside down queen cells in it, by the time I put them the right way up.
I got sick of dodging beautiful fresh cow pads the last couple of mornings, so this morning was a cow pad trip before breakfast. I feel bad about the ones I left behind, I’ll get those tomorrow morning.
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When I was a young’un in the UK many decades ago, we used to call those “country pancakes”. A favorite question to new pupils in my school was, “Would you rather run a mile and jump a style, or eat a country pancake?” Just FYI, a “style” is a step over bench thing, used by walkers to cross farmers’ fencing around livestock areas crossed by a public pathway. 
Obviously the initiated would take the running option. 
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I also noticed a few funny looking mushrooms, while I was at it. I guess a few more will start to appear in the coming days.
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Oh dear Jeff, sorry about your hives :(. That’s no good. I think they are predicting rain this weekend, so I will check my hubbys roster and see when I might come the rest of the week. I think I am hesitating in a bout of nerves. Worried that I will muck it up. But I’m a smart woman, I’m sure it will be fine, I just need to take the plunge and work it out as I go along.
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Hi Bella, thank you it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I guess having bees in a paddock where cows come & go is always risky. The two hives got pushed over so that the brood boxes finished upside down in a fashion. The honey boxes went for a bit of a slide.
Because the brood boxes didn’t suffer any sideways jolt, no bees got squashed between combs, therefore the beetles weren’t able to lay any eggs in the brood boxes. The strong colony numbers also helped.
Because of the weight of the honey in the honey frames, a lot of bees got squashed between the combs in one of the hives, that was where the beetles got a chance to lay eggs, in the dead & trapped bees.
I’m heading down shortly to get some more manure. It was hard to drive past lots of fresh pads that I left behind yesterday morning.
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