From: "Juan de Fuca" <hommes@olympus.net>
Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2002 12:54:31 -0800
To: <BiologicalBeekeeping@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: Re: moving hives?

Hi Julia and ditto happy NY.
Now, there are many ways to rome as Leonardo da Vinci suggested.
My back is baaad since I damaged my column back in the 50 ties. Therefore I
am cautious when and how I move things havier than depending on the day
pounds.
If you can handle a deep , which is about or more than 45 pounds ( 90 ?),
you remove cover and inner cover , rocks , bricks , whatever you have and
have a large towel handy to cover the frames ---quick. You do the same over
the lower box with frames . Naturally it depends how many boxes you have.
Place the box with bees on a piece of plywood.
You can of course make the deal easier by wrapping the whole schmear with a
ratchet strap, which is a handy thing to have anyway , available at hardware
stores or "Cost- Co" , etc.
You can carry the thing now by your lonely or have a partner helping you .
Or use the strap for the whole thing , closing any entry or output and have
2 poeple doing it all at once.
Since most or all of the cluster is high, it may be the time to switch the
crowd to the lower location.
The rest of the day is then occupied to figure out to how to proceed with
sequential events of doing this manipulation. But I trust you get the idea .
A kiddy waggon or wheel barrow is a handy thing to do the job too.
But what makes the whole affair easy and without much disturbance is the
towel or large rags method . I do this also when inspecting . Smoking is for
me a thing of the past . If any smoking , I use liquid smoke. Moving the
lower box with bottom boards of any kind is just a matter of stuffing
something handy into the entry. All this depends a lot on location and
temperature of the day . I refrain when it's windy because of the chill
factor.Good luck
Imker