Super Trolley

Honey supers weigh a fair bit when they're full and being a 46.5 cm square that needs to be kept level they're a bit of a pain to move. Not a huge problem with one or two supers but as numbers increase it's worth giving some thought to how to make moving them easier.

Built last Summer the Hivebarrow has proved it's usefulness

I've already made a hivebarrow for moving Supers and Brood Boxes from the out apiary to the car which makes life a lot easier but once home the supers need moving to the utility room and storing before extraction and later after extraction when they're slick with honey they need removing. I've previously sat them on crownboards or hive floors which is alright but a bit of a pain when you need to move them. This year I decided I needed some sort of mobile platform the supers could live on to save me having to carry them individually to the utility room for extraction and move them individually when they're in the way. Turns out what I was thinking about is called a Dolly, although I wanted one made to measure for Supers with a solid floor and an edge to contain any spilt honey. Unfortunately nobody makes them. Large scale bee keeping operations use pallets and pallet trucks which apart from being pricey couldn't really be used a Victorian town house so I was going to have to make my own.

Nice piece of free OSB

I borrowed a huge piece of fairly thick OSB and some treated timbers from a pile of debris left by builders working on a dodgy take away nearby. Whilst it's an eyesore and I gather has already led to the owner being fined I've actually got some useful wood from the pile. I also gave a pallet in the pile a little attention with a crowbar and made a nice new deep shelf in one of my outbuildings with most of it. Measuring the board using a spare Super and the timbers I made a couple of cuts to the board to make a base for the trolley and returned the rest of it to where I'd found it. I've sized it so there's about a centimetre of spare space around each Super.

Adding sides

I used yellow wood glue to attach the sides, loads of the stuff, and clamped them in place a few days whilst the it cured. Given the weight this will potentially be carrying I decided to give it six wheels allowing me to use fairly cheap ones and also distribute the weight better so it doesn't damage the floor in my utility room. I ordered 75mm castors with rubber tyres from Amazon. Each castor and top plate is rated to carry 50KG so six gives me a total load of 300KG. I opted for a set of 4 regular wheels and two seperate ones with brakes.

Sides attached, everything still fits.

I don't know much about OSB but I doubt it's particularly good stuff for putting screws into. In case you're wondering OSB stands for Oriented Strand Board and it's basically a load of wood bits glued together, quite good for partition walls and shed floors. To hold the wheels I made six wooden pads cut from a piece of pallet wood, sourced in the same place as the rest, and glued them in place with more wood glue. I weighted them for a couple of days whilst the glue set. At one end I planned to attach a loop of rope to help move it about and again I didn't really think OSB would hold up to that very well so I glued a short plank of wood underneath that area and clamped it too. It was slow going with all the clamping and waiting. Once all the glue was dry I attached all six wheels using a belt and braces approach of Gorilla Glue and great big wood screws. Don't think they'll be dropping off any time soon. The wheels with brakes were placed at diagionally opposite corners.

I sawed the corners off at about 45 degrees to make it easier to manouvere and drilled a couple of angled holes for the rope through the board and wood below. I then used a large masonry drill bit to roughly countersink them, should be okay. Cabinet making masterclass this clearly is not.

Healthy shiny coat.

If OSB gets damp it swells and the wood strands can pull apart. It's likely honey will get spilt on this trolley at some point and cleaning honey takes a lot of water. As I didn't want the thing to fall apart after it's first use I gave it a few coats of outdoor varnish. Actually I gave it a lot of coats of outdoor varnish. A side effect of the varnish was making the trolley look a nice bright yellowy colour and less like a collection of bits hauled from a pile of rubbish.

One Super Trolley

To finish off I added a bit of nylon rope which I tied underneath the trolley with a reef knot. Once tightened with pliers I applied a little heat to the knot and the rope ends then squished it all together, don't think it's going to fray or come apart any time soon. I also added a couple of drawer handles which I shall be using to move the trolley when it's not in use and being stored vertically. The handles were attached with gorrilla glue and screws supplied with the handles and then I slung some varnish over them too. I left it outside for a few weeks for the varnish to outgas before using it -although I'm also using a couple of solid crownboards between the supers and the trolley anyway.

Super Trolley in use.

It's exactly the right size to negotiate the inside of my house, and I can move supers about effortlessly. As well as making the boxes easier to move it also makes the extracting room much easier to manage. I suspect if some bee keeping supplier decided to start making these they'ed sell rather well although with free wood it's been a cheap piece of kit to construct.