Water based paint Vs oil based paint: which do you use?

[Yarra_Valley]

Traditionally oil paint has been used to paint hives, and apparantly not too many people over here seem too keen to use waterbased paint. Apparantly it can give off an odour when it heats up in the sun. To me water based paint seems very convenient. With water based two coats of paint , versus oil based: primer, undercoat and two coats. Drying times are also faster with water based.  

So I was wondering what experience you guys have had with different types of paint.

Thanks guys.

[Horns Pure Honey]

Water based paint can wash off over time and yes it does smell when it cooks or when it hasnt been used in a while due to the water starts to go "bad" if you might say. I myself wouldnt use it, bye :D

[Robo]

I've used both without issue.   The waterbase tends to not last as long as the oilbase, but other than that I wouldn't hesitate to use it if you have it.

I usually buy  mixing screw-ups (deep discounted) for my hives.  Since you only paint the exterior, I wouldn't worry about the cooking effect you talked of. I have never noticed such a thing.

[Kyle Clark]

What part of the hive needs to be painted. just the outside? or everything? or what?

[Lesli]

Just the outside--and some people don't even do that.

I prefer stain. I like the natural look.

[Horns Pure Honey]

I like stain to, but is cheaper to get mess up paint, bye

[Jay]

What part of the hive needs to be painted. just the outside? or everything? or what?

If you're going to paint, paint only the outside of the boxes, the girls will propolise the inner surfaces.

Paint both inside and outside surfaces of the telescoping outer cover and the bottom board, they both get a lot of use from the bees.

Don't do anything to the inner cover, insides of the boxes or any parts of the frames.

Hope this helps, good luck! :D

[Kyle Clark]

Thanks for the advise.

[Lesli]

I don't know how much a gallon of "oops" paint is, but the big stores have "oops" stain colors, too, at about $5 a gallon.

[Yarra_Valley]

I've got heaps of acrylic paint around the house, and I have a really nice light green colour. Its my favorite colour, will fit in well with the environment, and hopefully will be a little cooler than using stain. I do like the look of stain though, and I do have a bit around.

I won't have to worry about painting the teloscoping outer cover or the inner cover because here we use migratory covers and therefore and have a need for inner cover  :)

I have one super that someone has painted dark brown with a water-based paint, so I've given it two coats of mist green over the top. Looks really nice. The paint is quite soft hopefully it will harden up a bit.

As for the others, they all have enamel on them. Will have to deal with them a bit differently.

Thanks for all your help guys  :D

[Kirk-o]

I'm a house painter if you prime your hives with a good exterior primer
and two coats of a exterior acrylic paint it will out perform the oil paint from my experience but if you only have a couple of hives it is easy to get a mis tinted quart or two at the paint store at a discount and paint your hive kirk-o

[Anonymous]

I bought four one gallon cans of oops Olimpic stain at lowe's at the end of Oct. They were five dollars each and had a three dollar rebate slip print out with the recipet. The clerk said they wouldn't give me the rebate because I didn't pay full price, but I sent the rebate in and recivied a month latter a check for $12.00 so the stain cost me two dollars a gallon. I still wouldn't turn up my nose at five dollars a gallon either.
Only you can determin if the color is exceptable to you or you can mixx a couple to get a color you can live with.
:D  Al