Painting

I initially wanted to paint my hive with a mix of linseed oil and beeswax to be a bit more natural with it.  After getting some advice on the matter (and free exterior paint) I changed my mind.  The thing is, you only paint the outside of the hive to protect the wood.  It has nothing to do with what the bees are doing inside the hive.

Painting with linseed oil would mean needing to reapply it every year.  This just doesn't seem to be a smart thing to do with a hive full of bees.

Once the paint dried, I brought the hive inside and drilled entrance holes.  The entrance does not need to be anything fancy so long as you can make it bigger or smaller depending on the health and size of your colony.  This is important because the bees need to be able to guard their entrance.  A weak colony cannot guard a large entrance.  So, when my colony starts out, I will have most of the holes plugged with corks.  As the colony grows, I will unplug the corks to give the workers more room to fly in and out of the hive.

You can see that I also added a ventilation/entrance hole on the opposite corner from the entrance.  The entrance holes are spaced 1.5" apart.

Corks!