What colour is your bee suit?

Beekeeping & Apiculture Forum

Help Support Beekeeping & Apiculture Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
I have hives on a couple of industrial sites where high vis is a requirement. Therefore my bright orange Sherriff suits are prefect.
 
Another sage green here, plus a white one two sizes too big as a back up.
(If I encounter really nasty bees I could wear them both).
 
One daffodil. No I am not trying to court favour I blame my daughter for that. The other one is white. Just mended them, but they are getting a bit thin - all the washing!
 
We have a real kaleidoscope of colours.
For the kids, three white, one yellow, two sage.
Two lilac female Sentinel for swmbo and one sage BB, two grey Sentinel and four sage BB for myself, we have also picked up two breeze suits today for a trial.
 
Our association had a zoom talk last night about bee vision. Latest research says bees see mostly in the blue and UV spectrum, and they use their green receptors just to detect edges. They can't see yellow or red at all, these appear dark. So wear whatever colour you like!

But laundry detergents include brighteners which absorb UV and re-emit as visible light. So who knows how the bees might react to a well-washed beesuit??
 
This made me laugh. I have changed my bee suit twice since this thread started. My original post said I wouldn't change it for the world! Well bees getting in made me change my mind!:icon_204-2::icon_204-2::icon_204-2::icon_204-2:
 
I have the BB wear sage ones. Nice neutral colour but I think the type of fabric also helps. Some cheaper suits have a rougher finish which I think encourages bees to stay on. (Yes, I know bees can walk easily up glass windows but I've noticed that they move off smoother fabric suits more quickly.)

Someone at our BKA had a dark green, almost black, suit and he always seemed to get covered with bees. He wondered if it was the colour so he lent it to another beek one time. That guy was the one covered in bees that meeting so presumably it was the suit which was attractive (or annoying?) not the wearer?!
 
Someone at our BKA had a dark green, almost black, suit and he always seemed to get covered with bees. He wondered if it was the colour
White seems to attract them as well. remember some time ago, working on ChrisB's bee farm, there ws five of us out one day, four in Olive suits and Brian in a white one, we had to spend five minutes at each site before getting back into the landrover just brushing bees off Brian's suit, the rest of us were virtually bee free.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top