As you may know, I HATE ants. I don’t just hate them a little bit, I despise them. They completely destroyed my hives when I was starting out, so I build some hive stands to keep them out. You can take a look at that post HERE. Here is a quick how-to on how I build these, as I built another today.
First things first, remember Norm Abrams from This Old House? He has a saying. Measure twice, cut once. Yeah, should have done that. As you will see from the video, my memory was fuzzy. I somehow thought 31 inches was about right for the legs. Turns out, more like 21 inches would have been correct.
Scrap. I use as much scrap lumber as I can to build things. It just makes sense on a number of levels. It saves money, reduces waste, and reduces clutter in the wood shop. I started out by fishing around to see what I had handy. I had some 2x4s and some 4x4s, so I was in good shape. I needed a few things from Lowes for this project, such as the metal buckets for the legs to sit in, but hey, having something is better than nothing.
I ended up changing my mind on the length of the stand. Usually I make these 8′ long. I opted to buy a couple 12′ 2x4s today and make them longer. I am hoping to really increase my number of hives this year, so I hope I need the extra room. Watch the video below to see how I put it all together.
