>The work done by multiple parties has shown that colors significantly reduce drift, so I don't know what the statement above might apply to, other than the very gradual changes (like grass growing taller) that we all know bees ignore.  

I worked as a state bee inspector and I can tell you that I saw many bee yards where the hives were hidden by tall weeds. Not everyone mows or weed-wacks, especially those who keep bees in multiple states. I gave multiple examples of how the "appearance" of a bee yard changes throughout the seasons, especially where we have distinct seasons.

Prof Calderone pointed out to me the pitfall of brightly colored hives. It might be a good idea if the boxes always stayed on the same hives and always had the same number of supers. But that is not the case, hive boxes get moved up and down and swapped from hive to hive. The multiple colors would only serve to confuse them. 

That is, if that was the primary means of identification, which I submit it's not. One queen breeder I knew had 5-6000 double nucs (4 frames on each side of a regular hive). They were all painted silver. The maximizing of the queens returning to the proper hive was of obvious importance, but he depended on the bees learning the location rather than the appearance of the hive (they all "looked" the same").

PLB

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html