Hive Paint Schemes

Providing landmarks to the bees is harder. Most hives are plain white and drift occurs when there are lines of hives. Research has shown bees can distinguish shapes and colors and this should be helpful in reducing drift. All the research I found used simple shapes and bee distinguishable colors which aren't quite the same as human distinguishable colors. Like humans bees have 3 color receptors. However those receptors are shift towards the ultraviolet into a range humans can not see.
Shapes. I'm going to fall back to heraldry for the names of the shapes. They should be simple to paint and be able to be laid out with just a few lines of masking tape. All of these assume the hive is painted white first, then the second color used for the design. In the inversions the tape is used to keep areas white and the majority of the hive is painted the second color (hopefully a light color). Some of these can be done as inversions and take less effort like the Chevron or the 2 Fesses.

Basic Shapes

1 Line
Per Fess		Per Bend		Per Bend Sinister		Per Pale		Chief 1/3 of field
Terrace in Base 1/3 of field		Tierce 1/3 of field		Tierce sinister 1/3 of field
2 Lines
Fess		Bend		Bend Sinister		Pale		Quarter From any of 4 corners
Gyron From any of 4 corners I don't like it seems too small		Per Chausse From any of 4 directions Touches corners and midpoint of oppisite side		Per Chevron From any of 4 directions Starts 1/3 up and rises to 1/3 from top		Pile From any of 4 directions Does not touch corners and drops to within 1/3 of top		Gore From corner to center than down
3 Lines
Triangle* from any of 4 direction
4 Lines
Chevron From any of 4 directions		2 Fesses		2 Pales		2 Bends		2 Bend Sinisters
Border		Billet*		Bar*		Baton*		Baton Sinister*
Lozenge*		Points
Easy Inversions
Per Cross		Per Saltire		Inverted Border		Roundel*		Pall From any of 4 directions
Others
Flaunches Also from top and bottom. (Requires Compass)		Quarterly		Quarterly Per Saltire
Barry 4 or more even # of stripes		Bendy 4 or more even # of stripes		Paly 4 or more even # of stripes

*I uses ones that don't touch any edge for nucs.
Cross and Saltaire can also be truncated from the edges, which I use for nucs

Harder to Paint Charges
Annulet		Crescent		Cross		Saltire

Evidence shows bees can distinguish a solid circle from a ring but its a pain to paint. The easisest way is paint white, put a disk in the middle and paint another color, then a larger disk and repaint white. Getting the white to cover the other color can take several coats.

Cross and Saltire are done as inversion and by not extending the masking tape to the edges.

Colors