I set up a second apiary this year (the first one is in my backyard). It is at a large private charity garden that is surrounded on all sides by acres and acres of blackberries. My hope is that the hives here will help with the pollination of the fruit and veggies in the garden and have overflowing frames of honey. This is both a test to see how well I do with multiple hive sites and a chance to do some good: The honey from these hives will go to the community pantry that this garden grows produce for. If successful, I will grow this little apiary by a couple of hives next year and add a third site of hives.
In addition to building my steel hive stands, I also bought new hives and packages of bees – a full and couple ground-up start. I ended up using recycled steel bed frames for the hive stands, a smattering of welding, a lot of painting, some concrete work, and a little carpentry on some of the boxes that were broken in shipment.
The drawing for my hive stands is located here: