“How high off the ground is the hive stand going to be?” I remember asking my husband this question when we started beekeeping four years ago. We didn’t realize how this decision could make for one tall bee hive! (I know! What is tall to me may not be a big deal to others but tall hives can have safety issues for the beek!)
When we set up our first stand it was higher on one end than the other to make it level. We justified it by saying we were going to have HIS and HER hives. He is tall so he would get the high end. I am short so the low end was perfect for me. (I thought.)
Fast forward a couple of years and he is no longer taking part in the beekeeping aspect of the farm. Now I am responsible for all the hives and I am too short for that stand.
Danger! Tall Bee Hive!
In my ignorance (that is, not thinking about the future), I put a hive on the high end of the stand. The high end combined with just two deeps and two mediums has given me a nice tall bee hive and it is a problem for me. I knew I was in trouble the day I added the second medium honey super. The extent of my trouble became crystal clear the day I had to remove that super (and put it back) and it was full of honey.
Too short for my hive.
I found myself trying to put that very HEAVY, fully loaded honey super back on the hive. I tried standing on a cement block and was still too short. I know I looked like a cartoon character as I strained and heaved that box. (Praying I wouldn’t get stung!) But I just was not tall enough to get it back on the hive. Hubby came home for lunch in the middle of my ordeal. He was clueless to my wrestling match with that box! I had to put an empty super on the hive and take the frames out of the other one at a time so I could close up the hive.
I found myself lifting something too heavy for me at an awkward angle and I put myself and the bees in a dangerous position.
- I risked being off balance and falling.
- I risked injuring my back.
- If I had fallen the box could have landed on me and broke something on my body.
- If I had fallen I could have been stung MULTIPLE times.
- If I had fallen I could have fallen INTO the beehive and destroyed the bees and equipment.
To help myself in the future I will be setting my hives up on cement blocks or stands about eight inches or so off the ground. I am also considering going to all medium boxes and top bar hives.
10 Comments
Thank you for writing about setting up hive height. I’m a 5’2″ new Beek and am always wondering how I should take care of my hives down the road. I’m currently 51 years old and am very much looking forward to safely continue my hobby for many, many years! Any tips and tricks are always helpful.
Event for the brood box use shallow supers. When one gets full remove it and process the honey. Simple
Google Slovenian bee hives and take a look at them. In Slovenia, the beekeepers are old and their design seems to make a lot of sense to me. You access the hive from the rear while the bees access the hive from the front. The comb frames slide out. They are designed this way to make it easier for the old timers in Slovenia to access the honey easily. I have one of these hives on order through ebay. Looking forward to experimenting with it.
Since I am a new beek I wonder how hard it will be to get my shallows off the top? I am 6 supers high. I had no problem reaching the top with an empty hive, but getting it down will be much more difficult.
I, too, am short (and shrinking every day it seems!). I have just had my husband cut down all my 10 frame boxes to 8’s to reduce weight. I am also moving to all shallow 8’s for my honey supers in order to reduce weight and size. As more women are getting involved in beekeeping, I see 8-frame equipment becoming more popular. I currently have one hive with 8 boxes on it! Hope you have a great year!
Thinking about getting to bees.And wondering the cost to get started.
Dennis, Too many variables to give you a cost. Depends on what you need? Whether or not you are going to purchase or build hives? What equipment you think you will need (many people don’t wear any protective gear). Whether or not you will purchase your bees, try to find a swarm, or just bait the hive in the spring and see if you can entice a swarm to take up residence. Google beekeeping and look at sites to get information and costs. Purchase some books on beekeeping and figure out how deeply you want to get into this.
First and foremost, save your back. I’d reconfigure the site or the hive stand if I were you. Mine stand in a heap of mulch which makes it easier to level. The mulch also makes it easier to drench the soil around the hive to prevent ants from gaining access. On top of this, I have stands built of 1-1/2″PVC. They are sturdy enough for me to jump on them without breaking. The legs stand in an inverted slotted shower drain (the green or black sturdy plastic ones are great because the rain drains right through, yet make a sturdier stand). I’ve had a hive that weighed 305 Lbs last year with no trouble. If you use cement blocks, lay them on the side: snow and melt and freeze may crack blocks).
Next, tackle the height issue: I went with all mediums to lower the weight. Some folks use 8 frame equipment. I’m not sure if combining the two would work because eventually, you deal with a space that is to small to be functional for the bees in winter.
My back is not what it used to be, so I have a plastic table (those fold-able things that you can stand on their side when you are done but that can stay outside). If I choose to remove an entire super of honey at one time, I never need to move it lower than waist high. I can put the super directly on the table (but you may squish some girls) or place a couple of 2 X 4 on the table and place the super on the 2 X 4s.
Finally, you may want to have a short (but *very sturdy* stool-make it big enough to stand comfortably) that you can place next to the hive to stand on it and the table with an empty box on it and remove frame by frame.
Otherwise, the Slovenian hives already mentioned might work quite well. (Unfortunately, you would have to completely remodel the whole thing). Same thing with the top-bar hive. Some folks have good success with the top bar hive, others find it too small for the hive to survive Wisconsin winters. also, I’m not sure how you keep the queen from laying all over the place, but I’m not familiar with that equipment. Good luck to you. Just remember that a few pounds of honey are not worth a slipped disk!
First and foremost, save your back. I’d reconfigure the site or the hive stand if I were you. Mine stand in a heap of mulch which makes it easier to level. The mulch also makes it easier to drench the soil around the hive to prevent ants from gaining access. On top of this, I have stands built of 1-1/2″PVC. They are sturdy enough for me to jump on them without breaking. The legs stand in an inverted slotted shower drain (the green or black sturdy plastic ones are great because the rain drains right through, yet make a sturdier stand). I’ve had a hive that weighed 305 Lbs last year with no trouble. If you use cement blocks, lay them on the side: snow and melt and freeze may crack blocks).
Next, tackle the height issue: I went with all mediums to lower the weight. Some folks use 8 frame equipment. I’m not sure if combining the two would work because eventually, you deal with a space that is to small to be functional for the bees in winter.
My back is not what it used to be, so I have a plastic table (those fold-able things that you can stand on their side when you are done but that can stay outside). If I choose to remove an entire super of honey at one time, I never need to move it lower than waist high. I can put the super directly on the table (but you may squish some girls) or place a couple of 2 X 4 on the table and place the super on the 2 X 4s.
Finally, you may want to have a short (but *very sturdy* stool-make it big enough to stand comfortably) that you can place next to the hive to stand on it and the table with an empty box on it and remove frame by frame.
Otherwise, the Slovenian hives already mentioned might work quite well. (Unfortunately, you would have to completely remodel the whole thing). Same thing with the top-bar hive. Some folks have good success with the top bar hive, others find it too small for the hive to survive Wisconsin winters. also, I’m not sure how you keep the queen from laying all over the place, but I’m not familiar with that equipment. Good luck to you. Just remember that a few pounds of honey are not worth a slipped disk!
Help! Veteran beekeepers, I need your input. In early spring of 2014, I bought & set my first box, which contained bees. I had the traditional stack of 3. Last week, I tried for the first time to harvest some honey. I took off the top, and it was full of tiny winged insects, possibly ant drones, as there also were tiny ants crawling up the posts to the hive. There also were many tiny bugs scurrying about that were round and black, and I would say looked like tiny roaches of some sort. I took the honey super off and it was still brand new. There were bees in it, but no honey and appears never was after about 16 months. I’m in the Southern forests of Deep East Texas. Can I sprinkle ant poison around the hive, or will the bees pick it up? Not only do I not want to kill the bees, I don’t want to kill us!