In this video, Laurence Edwards demonstrates how to improve the standard Abello hive stand by extending its length and strengthening its structure to accommodate many nucleus colonies. He explains the limitations of the original stand, then shows his design using six 2x4 lumber pieces (38 × 63 mm) braced together in the middle, attached to the hot‑dip galvanized steel legs of the Abello stand. He performs a load test by standing (110 kg) on the middle of the stand, noting only slight flex, and explains that additional central bracing will make the stand essentially bomb‑proof for the lighter loads of nuc hives. The final product is a 4.8‑meter, fully adjustable, levelable stand capable of holding 10‑14 nucs, with splayed, adjustable legs for stability and easy leveling.
Chapters
Today I'm going to show you how to make the very best hive stand on the market quite a lot better. So you know me, I love the Abello hive stand. Carbon steel, hot dip galvanized, will last a lifetime. The only restriction you've got is how many hives that you can get on it. And in this apiary here, I've got loads of nucs behind me. I just want super, super long hive stands to place 10, 12, 14 nucs on, something like that. I don't mind that they're close together. I don't mind that they're in a row. I just want them up off the ground, something that's levelable and something that is not going to rot very quickly. So I'm not doing pallets anymore. What you will see behind me there is the Abello hive stand, but all I've done is I've just added on a couple of extra bits of wood. So as opposed to using 2 2x4s, I'm using 6 2x4s, and then I'm just connecting them together in the middle. I'm probably going to brace up the center a little bit as well just to give some extra strength, but I'll show you. I weigh 110 kilograms. I know, quite a lot. I need to go on a diet, but I'll go and stand directly in the middle of that now, and it flexes a little bit, but it's definitely not going to break. Once I add that additional bracing on there as well, it's going to be pretty much bombproof. But for nucleus colonies that never really get that heavy anyway, that uniform distributed load on there is probably going to be less than I weigh anyway. So it's quite a good test of me going and jumping on the middle of it, which I'm going to go and do now. So you can see, tiny bit of flexing, but more than holds my weight. Once I've got the bracing on, that'll be super, super strong. I'll flash over now and show you the exact construction. So I've got the standard Abello legs there, hot dip galvanized carbon steel, pins in the legs, plates on the floor, splayed legs to give you that lateral stability, and fully adjustable legs to ensure that you can level everything out. Then these bits of wood here, they're 38 by 63 is the size that you want for these, and And then what you can see is I've just braced the 2 together in the middle. That bit there is definitely going to be the weak point where you've just got 2 of them butted up. But what I've done is I've screwed in along there and all I'm going to do to finish it off is just add a few braces in the middle there to kind of share the load between each of these beams. And then it's exactly the same on the other side. You've got your 2x4 going out that side, enough for 2 beehives on that side, and then back to the galvanized legs there. Really, really simple design, gives me a 4.8-meter hive stand that's fully adjustable, and as you can see, if I do 2 for this apiary, I'll be able to put all of those hives on the stands very easily.
