Langstroth Hive Stand Instructions

We just had someone ask about our hive stands and I thought the question would be of interest to a number of beekeepers.

Hello from Southwest Louisiana.

We have started keeping bees and were on the net looking for a bee hive stand that would work for us.

Ran across your blog showing the long hive stand that you moved a hive to.  On some property you had purchased.

Had about 8 hives on it in the photo.

Looks like you used several single post in the ground with y arms to hold double rails. 

Do you have plans or the details for the hive stand?   Looked on the blog but did not see dimensions, material, etc.

We currently have 5 hives.

Sincerely,

Steven & Nola

So here is a step by step for building a hive stand for a Langstroth Hive.  This stand is designed for two (2) Langstroth hives with plenty of work space between them.  The hive stand referenced by Steven & Nola is not very functional.  It is difficult to get around to work on the hives.  We find a stand that supports 2 hives at a time to be the best.  When we take off the telescoping cover to our hives while working them, we place them in the open space between the hives on the stand instead of putting them on the ground. We work our hives one at a time. Convenient!!

Building a hive stand is best done in comfortable weather or just before the bees start flying.  Somehow doing this in the summer in a bee suit is just NO FUN.

Materials:

•      2 2"x8"x8' pieces of STRAIGHT pressure treated lumber
•      4 2"x8"x12" pieces of  pressure treated lumber (we use pine)
•      24 4" screws (galvanized so they won't rust) (Phillips head ONLY)
•      4 cinder blocks (we use the small ones)
•      1 or 2 bags of sand (optional)
•      Wood chips or mulch (we have a pile of it so not sure how to measure this)
•      Black plastic bags or black plastic sheeting (This will make sense in a minute)
•      Wooden shims
•      Level
•      Tape measure

Tools:

•      Electric drill & screw driver
•      Flat head shovel (Not the pointy version)
•      Compass
•      Beekeeper's assistant.
•      Picnic table or other flat surface to support the stand under construction (optional)

Steps to construct & install hive stand:

1. Be sure you have a sunny location to set up your hive stand.  If you have a shady one you invite hive beetles & other unwanted pests.  In North Carolina our bees like it hot.
2. Your hive will face southeast so be sure BEFORE you start this does NOT represent a problem. We have our hives facing southeast to maximize daylight for the bees.
3. Begin assembling the hive stand.

               a. Using your tape measure, measure roughly equal spacing

                   for your cross members, the 12" pieces.  Some

                   beekeepers want the support pieces to come under

                   the edge of each hive. Think through your strategy before

                   you begin the next step.

               b. With you cross pieces in place, drill 24 pilot holes in the
                   side of your hive stand.  This represents 3 pilot holes for
                   each cross piece on each side.
                c. Using your electric screw driver, screw in the 24 4" screws
                    to assemble the stand.  (Note - I tried 3" screws, they
                    were too short.  I also tried only using 2 screws per
                    support, not enough support.  I already made the mistakes
                    so you won't have to. But......)
               d. Your hive stand is now assembled

     4. Preparing your hive stand location

    

               a.  Using your compass, determine which direction is

                    southeast.

               b.  Place your hive stand on the ground so that it faces

                    southeast and to determine what you need to do to

                    level the ground where your hive stand will be placed.

               c. Using your level, flat head shovel & beekeeper's assistant

                   to level the area where the hive stand will set up.

   

              d.  Place the 4 cinder blocks a foot or so in from the end of

                   the hive stand and the place the hive stand onto the cinder

                   blocks.  See above.

              e.  Relevel the stand that now is on top of the cinder blocks.

                   (2 cinder blocks per side)

               f. Remember I said straight pieces of lumber.  Chances are it
                  was not as straight as we had hoped. This is where the
                  shims come in handy.  Using the shovel, shims, level
                  and beekeeper's assistant, finish the leveling.  The
                  Beekeeper's assistant can stand back and eyeball the
                  stand to point out obvious mistakes.  My assistant is
                  excellent and finding my mistakes and not just with
                  the hive stand. Ha!

 Here is the finished project with hives on the hive stand.  At this point we were ready for yet another hive.  We ended up moving these hives to our property in Liberty, NC, Plan Bee.

Hope this is of value to you.  If you have questions we will try and respond.

 That's all  folks.  The Bee Boy out.

Confusing Bees and installing a Hive Stand

Just returned from the NCSBA (North Carolina State Beekeepers Association). Great meeting and learned lots.  My wife and I have enjoy watching Gold Rush on the Discovery Channel.  This is about some common American guys that make lots of mistakes as they try to strike it rich by mining for Gold in Alaska.  Turns out to get an ounce of gold takes sifting through tons of material. 

One of the nuggets from the NCSBA meeting we rediscovered is the idea of confusing honeybees.  Turns out that honeybees are three dimensional navigators and when returning to their hive they don't check out the box the way we humans would.  Instead they fly to the 3 dimensional coordinates they remember and go in.  If you have been following along with us you will remember we recently captured a swarm off a rock in front of our Charlotte hive.  The swarm is a small one and the bees are just a small cluster. 

• So how to beef up the hive? 
• Wouldn't it be a nifty thing to get a larger hive of bees to help out the smaller one?

Solution, CONFUSE OUR BEES.

The plan called for us to swap the location of the larger hive with the smaller one.  When the bees from the larger hive return to their old location, the smaller hive would be there to welcome them in.  The theory goes that returning bees with pollen, nectar or propolis are welcome.  Lots of bees, lots of comb built out in a hurry so the new hive's progress is accelerated.

STEP 1 - Build and Install a new Hive Stand

STEP 2 - Confuse the bees

The reason for the new bee stand is we have larger plans for the bee yard and want to have extra room on the beehive stand.  We have gone from a 4' hive stand to 8'.  To make life easier, we put the longer stand in front of the old one. 

Once we had the larger stand in place, we proceeded to swap beehive locations.  Moving Tzion, our new swarm hive, went well.  The bees seemed to be reading their manual and nicely flying into the new hive at the old location.

Vav Hive and the problems begin - Our old hive consisted of 1 deep (brood), 1 shallow (brood), 1 shallow (honey), 1 medium (wax foundation - hey, this was all we had).  When we bought the hive about a year ago, we hated the wooden ware.  A nice warm spring day seemed like just the opportunity to move our bees into clean new wooden ware and a screen bottom.  We went from 9 frames to 10 deep frames with 2 new frames installed and 1 old frame removed. Spotted 3 supersedure cells but didn't have the gear to split the hive.  UGH!

The deep move completed - We moved, shook and brushed bees into the new box praying we didn't roll our queen.  Thinking about it, with all of the queen cells, this was an okay time since we had tons of bees and new queens on the way. Few hive beetles and no mites to speak of.

The bees hated us.
      Smoke and a blizzard of bees.

You will probably disagree with our decision but we added a deep with new frames above the old deep.  We like deep brood boxes and think shallows don't provide enough room for the bees.

Shallow of brood, shallow of honey and an medium to build out for honey and we were done.

Did we kill our bees in both hives?

Time will tell.

Bee Boy Out.