I had the opportunity to contribute to a beehive for the local community garden group, Sustainable Springfield. They currently have five older hives that they are replacing with ten new ones. Their current colonies will split soon as the new queens find homes in the extra hives. In return for our contribution they gave us the opportunity to paint and name the new hive which they dropped off and picked up after painting.

I went with a Kansas themed house. I tried to get some bright contrasting colors on all sides because I read bees like that and also it helps them distinguish their hive from the next one. Somewhere I read that their favorite color is purple, followed by blue. Not to worry KU fans, apparently purple looks like blue to bees. Everyone knows blue is better. :) My KU sticker on the side did not last however. Not an outdoor thing. The lettering on the front is vinyl though and should hold up.

Also if you look behind the hive you will see some progress has been made on the large tree that crushed my neighbors garage in the hurricane back in October.

In return for our contribution we should get some local honey, which I'm very excited about. But mostly I wanted to support our local bees which are already hard at work pollinating the tangelo tree in my backyard.