Hive Stand ready for action.

With the arrival of our packaged bees scheduled for April 16th, it was time to get into gear and construct a hive stand.  Getting the hives off of the ground is helpful in several ways.  One, it provides better ventilation, and it also helps save your back when working the hives.  It looks good too, which is a plus if you are going to have hives in your backyard!  I built the hive stand using treated lumber, and it should provide years of low maintenance service.

Here is the area after the sod has been stripped, and the first support blocks are place and leveled.  This area is about 10' long, and 32" wide.

After some design thoughts, I went to the shop and constructed the hive stand.  The stand frame is 2x6 treated lumber, and 4x4 posts were used for the legs.  A full hive, with several medium supers full of honey can weigh several hundred pounds, so you have to build for strength, that's for sure!

Here is the completed hive stand.  It is 8' long, and 20" wide.  This should support the bottom boards under the hives just fine.  I added a stringer at each end for side support for the bottom boards.  This should comfortably and safely hold 4 bee hives.  Our plan is to have 3 or 4 hives at the most, so we are good to go!

After getting the stand set, and making sure everything was level, all that was left was to add mulch around the stand, and clean up the mess!  Here is the finished product, ready for hives and bees!

That about takes care of the preparation before the bees arrive.  I'll get a hive assembled and placed on the stand for my next post.  Then............all we need are BEES!!!!!!!!!!!