The goal of both beginners and experienced beekeepers is a good honey collection of a high-quality sweet product. To provide insects with a sufficient supply of honey plants, many beekeepers use an apiary on wheels. The advantage of the design is the simple principle of DIY assembly. An important advantage is the possibility of repeated use of the structure.
Features and reasons for creating a mobile apiary
During the season, beekeepers often go into “nomadic mode”, transporting bee colonies to various fields planted with agricultural honey plants. Of course, such nomadic activity is somewhat troublesome, but it pays off because it helps to increase the seasonal honey collection.
When planning the transportation of bees, you need to take into account a certain nuance: this type of beekeeping is advisable in steppe and forest areas, where migration is the only opportunity to get a good honey harvest. In areas where meadow honey plants bloom in turn throughout the season, it is most practical to maintain stationary apiaries.
Advantages and disadvantages
Mobile apiary is gaining more and more fans. This type of beekeeping has the following advantages:
- the optimal option for collecting monofloral honey (bees collect nectar from one honey plant). The most popular are linden, buckwheat, and sunflower products, which are distinguished by their unique medicinal and taste qualities;
- An apiary on wheels is easy to move, so it is not difficult to periodically transport structures to areas with flowering crops. At the same time, the honey yield increases, and the collection period is reduced.
During the rainy season, you can transport the hives to areas with favorable weather conditions. But at the same time, it is necessary to take into account the possibility of close proximity of other apiaries (it is advisable to exclude such a neighborhood).
How to make it yourself
The easiest way to travel with insects is to use a bee hut mounted on a car trailer or truck. Such designs are easy to make and assemble yourself.
Tools and materials
To set up a nomadic apiary you will need a suitable trailer and the following set of materials:
- wooden boards for the frame, sheets of polystyrene foam at least 3 cm thick;
- metal corners;
- wooden beam with parameters 6x7 cm;
- self-tapping screws;
- liquid nails or glue;
- A sheet of galvanized iron is suitable for decorating the pallet.
To extend the service life of the structure, high-quality materials are used. Lumber is selected from soft wood species (cedar, larch, poplar, cedar, non-resinous pine, fir, spruce, linden). All wooden elements must be smoothly planed, without roughness or chips.
To assemble the structure you will need the following tools: level, knife, saw, tape measure or ruler, pencil, sandpaper.
Drawings and dimensions
According to the widespread scheme, it is allowed to install up to 30 hives on a trailer to a passenger car. There are two options for placing the beekeeper's workplace on the platform: in the center or in the front.
The remaining elements of the mobile apiary can be arranged in the following sequence: honey extractor, cutting table, seat, cabinet/compartment for tools, modules with hives. Moreover, the houses are installed in one tier or in 2 tiers, taking into account the fact that the weight of one hive is approximately 1.5 kg.
Assembly
The procedure for assembling the structure can be divided into several stages. Sequence of work:
- on sheets of polystyrene foam and boards/fibreboard, mark the location of the elements of the house and cut out the blanks with a sharp knife/file;
- grinding in elements made of fiberboard and expanded polystyrene;
- the walls of the hives are carefully sanded using sandpaper;
- assemble a frame from wooden beams (width 1.1 cm, depth 2 cm) and install it on the back wall of the house;
- structural elements are glued together with liquid nails;
- the support for the frames is made of strips of plywood.
Trailer loading rules
When placing hive houses on a structure, it is important to follow certain requirements. Initially, a frame is built from boards, taking into account the size of the platform and the number of hives. In the frame, shelves are attached to the corners for installing hives.
Depending on the design of the trailer (flatbed or booth), holes are cut in the walls/sides corresponding to the hive entrances. The final stage is arranging the houses on the shelves and securely fixing them so that the elements do not move when vehicles move.
When equipping mobile hives, preference is given to single-tier designs. But sometimes beekeepers use two-tier structures to save space. But it is not recommended to install bulky structures, since insects develop better in separate houses rather than in multi-tiered structures.
