I am working with a community garden in NYC where they want two hives to mainly pollinate their fruit trees. It's a family place and we are having a family workshop assembling the hives this weekend. 

My question is: how far can we go in painting and decorating the hives? They would like them to be colorful and possibly painted with images of flowers, bees, etc.
Will the bees have trouble recognizing their own hives this way? Any other unforeseen problems? I have never seen hives done up this way except the images of gaily painted Polish hive fronts that recently appeared on Bee-L
Yours,
John Howe
The Brooklyn Bee

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