Post 16 of 29 in the AZ Hive series
When we were researching AZ Slovenian hives, we kept seeing that traditional Slovenian beekeepers paint a panel of folk art on the front of each hive. At the dinner table one evening, we got talking about what theme we could do on ours. We threw out ideas — floral (a different flower for each hive), biblical (Bible characters), family history. Then someone said, “How about a TV show?” Of course Friends, Psych, and a few others my daughters love got mentioned. Then someone said, “How about Scooby Doo?” The room echoed with “yes!”, “that’s perfect!”, “let’s do it!”
That’s how we ended up with a Scooby Doo theme.
With the theme chosen, we had a problem: the main cast is only five characters, and we had six hives. The sixth hive needed to be a monster — but which monster? Research reminded us of a Scooby Doo episode where the villains were giant bees. No way I could put “Bees” on a hive as the bad guy. So we pivoted (Friends pun intended) and unanimously agreed the sixth hive would be Wasp.
Each hive has a character, with that character’s iconic color carried through every detail. You’ve already seen the color-matched touches in earlier posts: the screws on the inner locking bars match the hive, the outer door handles match too. The entrance on each hive gets a matching color and small icon — a quick visual marker for which hive is which when you’re standing in the apiary.
It’s a small thing. But six hives in a row, all the same gray plywood, all the same dimensions — without the names and the colors, every visual reference is “the third one from the left.” With the names, it’s just Velma, Shaggy, Wasp, and the rest — and the other person knows exactly which hive you mean.
The theme also gave us something to build the bee shed around. The wall behind the hives isn’t just a wall with entrances cut through it — it’s a full Scooby Doo mural, the gang being chased by a swarm of wasps.
Which is the next part of the series.
Next: Re-siding the Shed End — prepping the wall for the entrances and the mural that came after.