Hive Trolley

Hive Trolley / Cart

How do you move heavy supers, hives and syrup from the apiary to your car or house?

Beekeepers back is something I could fall foul of so I needed a solution for transporting the supers from the hive to home, feeding the bees with buckets of syrup and for moving my hives to an out apiary in the winter (more on this in a future post).  Also – when I thought I would have 10 full supers of honey, the need for a hive trolley seemed particularly acute.

I was pointed in the direction of 2 different types of trolleys and went for the garden cart below.

Hive Trolley
Hive Trolley

It’s perfect for my needs.  It can fit 4 national supers without them sliding off. Be warned it comes flat pack, the assembly instructions are very basic, and give yourself 1 hour to understand how it fits and a further 1 hour to assemble. A second head/opinion/helper (or better yet leader/flat pack-enthusiast) is also useful (regular readers will know this to be my Dad).

It’s not cheap (£65-£85) so be prepared for your partner to question its worth when you discover you’re only going to get 35 pounds of honey – and especially so, it they are 8 months pregnant, suffering back pain and haven’t invested in ones of those pregnancy back supports due to the costly nature of them!

A hand / sack truck, like photo below, was also recommended to me by experienced beekeeper:

Hive Trolley 2
Hive Trolley 2

Links

If you are interested in hive trolleys, try the Amazon links below:

You will see similar products if the above do not meet your needs or are out of stock.

Make sure the hive trolly will fit your hives. In the UK the external length x width dimensions of national brood boxes and supers are 46cm x 46cm (just over 18 inch square).

I understand the most commonly used hives in the USA are the Langstroth hives with external length x width dimensions of 50.8cm x 41.6cm (20 inch x 16 3/8 inch).

* I could not find an equivalent hand / sack truck for USA (i.e. robust, larger wheels for outdoor use). Grateful for any links to equivalent used in USA.

Author: Roger

regaining my sanity through beekeeping

6 thoughts on “Hive Trolley”

    1. I like it. I like it a lot. Unfortunately, I struggle with putting flat packs together, and the garden cart pushed me to the limit of my capabilities.

  1. We’ve got something like the hand truck. It’s custom made for bee boxes and has sides and little swinging arms that can flip over the top at exactly the right height to hold two or 3 supers in place so they don’t tip out. Any more than 3 supers and it’s too hard to manoeuvre so we load up 3 and cart them back to the honey room. We generally extract those before returning them and collecting the next 3.

    It’s still heavy work on your back no matter what conveyance device you employ. Slow and steady and lift with your knees!

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