This idea popped up on my
facebook feed yesterday and I think it is really neat. It solves a lot of problems that I have with my
beekeeping.
The basic idea is to take the old chassis of a caravan, rip the upper parts off just leaving the basic frame. Then construct a custom platform above, to securely keep your hives on. With appropriate strapping the whole trailer,
bees and all, can be towed to a new location, then the trailer levelled with jacks/bricks and the hives opened. The central decking allows the hives to be inspected, and all work happens at a comfortable height. The trailer in the attached images supports 15 langstroth hives, each one securely anchored in an angle iron support.
Being able to move hives has some serious advantages in my area. The agricultural nectar flows tend to be intense, but localised and short lived. Oilseed rape, for example, lasts for about 3 weeks here, early in the year. Colonies that get to work OSR early in the year build up really well and go on to make good honey harvests from other flowers. In years where I have had OSR adjacent to my apiary I notice substantial differenced in spring build up to the years where it is further away, or out of forage range altogether. I'm currently very time poor in the beekeeping season, and moving my hives without a trailer like this is sufficiently difficult that it is essentially impossible. Close the hives, hitch it up, and go.
It also resolves problems with uneven ground, weed growth around hives and the like because you can elevate the whole working platform. Useful on my sloping ground where each hive currently needs to be painstakingly levelled.
I'm parking this info here for now, as I think this will something that develops over many months.
Any thoughts, from those with fabrication
experience? I haven't welded anything on this scale before.