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In apiaries, it is advisable to place beehives on some stand. It elevates the beehive and improves hive safety. Harvest Lane Honey offers you a plastic hive stand to help you achieve this very important part of apiary setup. The Harvest Lane Honey plastic hive stand comes from a company that has an impressive reputation in beekeeping. It has many products that are loved by beekeepers. This plastic beehive stand is sturdy and has great balance. It does not topple your beehive over or buckle under the weight of beehive boxes placed on it.
About the Harvest Lane Honey Plastic Hive Stand
The Harvest Lane Honey plastic hive stand is a useful elevation for your beehives. It is raises the beehive you place on it above the reach of small animals such as mice, that might want to enter the beehive. Slugs too and other crawling insects and animals have a difficult time reaching the beehive and gaining entry. The stand does not have good grip for these small animals, so they cannot climb up the stand and into the beehive. If you need to, you can apply chemical preparations on the legs of the stand to keep out beehive intruders such as sugar ants.
Design
Harvest Lane Honey has made this plastic hive stand to very specific dimensions. It is a very tight fit for both 8-frame and 10-frame Langstroth beehives. The tight fit makes this beehive stand one with your beehive. There are also 4 screw holes on the stand that allow you to attach the base of your beehive to the stand.
- Having no wobble in the stand makes sure that it holds up your beehive with no risk of dropping it. Of course, you should periodically check for leaning of the stand and prepare the ground under the stand to support the weight of the beehive.
- As you add more boxes to the same beehive stack, you should consider the possible weight that the stand is carrying.
A pleasant addition to this plastic beehive stand, is a tray to hold your frames. The tray holds the frames on the inside and makes your work progress faster. This especially works in your favor when you need to carry out thorough beehive inspections and during honey harvesting. Without the frame attached to the stand, this Harvest Lane Honey plastic hive stand measures 20 x 20 x 12 inches and weighs approximately 5 pounds.
The hive stand is made of four side panels that slide against each other. Metal rests provide the surfaces on which your beehive bottom board rests. The bottom board can be further attached to the stand using screws on the upper side of two of the side panels. The four side panels are made using plastic and are designed for added strength when they are all joined together. Cut outs on the side panels allow for pressure distribution and dissipation through the panels. They also provide points for holding the side panels and hive stand once fully assembled. When completed, only four points of the plastic hive stand are in contact with the ground.
Assembly
The hive stand is easy to level and put together. It comes unassembled, so you have a little putting of things together to do. Shipping the stand unassembled saves on packaging needs and allows better protection of the various parts that make up the stand. It also minimizes damage to the stand during transit. Assembling the plastic stand is easy and the picture on the box containing the various parts is a great guide during assembly.
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Pros and Cons
Pros
- Using plastic to make this hive stand is a great move by Harvest Lane Honey. Even with prolonged contact with the ground, plastic does not get easily damaged. This is unlike wood and metal which get degraded quite fast; especially when in contact with water over a prolonged period of time. Plastic is both rust and rot-resistant.
- This stand can hold up your 8-frame and 10-frame Langstroth beehives with no fuss. During assembly, the panels that make up the stand slide against each other to fit the size of beehive that you have. Beekeepers using any of the two standard sizes of the Langstroth beehive are therefore suited to use this plastic beehive stand.
- This beehive stand is strong, yet very light. You can move it to any place you want with ease. For beekeepers that move large distances with their bees during pollination season, the ability to dissemble the plastic hive stand and bring it back together helps.
Cons
- This plastic hive stand does not come with assembly instructions. The closest to assembly instructions that you get is the picture on the box containing the stand’s parts. While this picture is enough guidance for most beekeepers buying the stand, Harvest Lane Honey should consider including detailed and clearly written assembly instructions for beekeepers.
Further Thoughts
Beehive boxes with stored honey and frames with brood are heavy, but cannot bend or break this plastic Harvest Lane Honey beehive stand. If you are going to have any malfunction with this stand, it is going to be the ground under the stand allowing the stand’s legs to sink into the ground due to the weight of the beehive.
Conclusion
Harvest Lane Honey is a company with many products in beekeeping. The company is also at the forefront of both wild and honeybee conservation. The products from this company such as the Harvest Lane Honey plastic hive stand, are usually good quality and very effective at the jobs they are designed to do. This plastic hive stand performs as promised and even goes the extra mile in keeping your beehive at a nice height. Its great performance, design and long life make the Harvest Lane Honey plastic hive stand a great investment for beekeepers. It can be used with great success in the beekeeping operations of both beginner beekeepers and experienced beekeepers. This hive stand beats using paving blocks, wood pallets, cinder blocks and other DIY supports that beekeepers commonly use to elevate their beehives.
Have you ever used the Harvest Lane Honey plastic hive stand? Leave a comment below and let us know what you thought of it.
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