I did a beekeeping course in September 2026. Over four days I went from feeling confident, to nervous, to confused, and ended up nervously confident.
The Stencil 4000
Every registered hive in New Zealand is technically required to carry its registration number. I have just got my hive, so I have been watching what other people do online. Some use a Sharpie. Some use tags. Someone used a stencil and spray paint, which I liked.
I did not want to freehand mine, and I did not want to buy a custom stencil for one hive. So I made one.
What our website generator does
You type a registration number, pick a font and a spray guard, and the stencil is drawn in the browser. Letters and numbers, up to eight characters. Nothing is uploaded to make it: the file is built on your machine and comes out as a binary STL that any slicer will open, ready for your printer.
The plate is 245 by 111 mm and 1.6 mm thick, in one piece, with the characters cut right through. An optional lip, 4.4 mm tall and 1.4 mm wide, catches the overspray, so paint goes where you aimed it instead of misting across the box. It can run all the way round, the top and bottom only, or the left and right only.
The fiddly part was letters with hollow middles. Cut a 0 or an 8 straight through and the middle drops out onto the print bed as a loose island. Each counter gets a 2.5 mm bridge instead, so the middle stays attached and the digit still reads. Two of the five fonts are open enough to need no bridges at all. That is why there is a stencil font in the list.
Five fonts, all open-licensed, and every one is tested against all 26 letters and 10 digits before it goes on the page. If a glyph would leave a loose island, the test fails in the repo rather than on someone's print bed.
It prints flat on a 256 mm bed with no supports. My Bambu Lab P1S does it in one go. Then you tape it to the box, spray thin coats, and peel it off.
Print your own, or I can help print it
There are two ways to get one, and I am not going to be precious about which you pick.
Print it yourself. The STL is free. No account, no email, no catch. If you have a 256 mm bed, that is the whole story.
Or I print it. Not everyone owns a printer, and some people own one that has been sitting on a shelf judging them. The same page takes an order: number, font, lip, address. I print it in black PETG by default and post it anywhere in New Zealand. $24.99 for the stencil, $6.56 for the courier, $12.45 if you are rural. Send it through and I reply with the total and the bank details. It goes in the post once the transfer clears.
Why bother
A stencil is a small thing that saves an annoying job, and it seemed silly to build it for one hive and leave it at that. The money from the printed ones goes into my hive. That is the whole business plan. It is not a shop, and there is no stencil empire coming.
The tool is at teamsuperpanda.com/hive-stencil.