Hive Stands - Pipe with wooden saddles

I came up with a pipe stand system and have been using it for over 10 years now.  I've used it in my home apiary and two or three of our bee club apiaries.  I came up with it because of research mixed with theories and a bit of common knowledge of insect pests.  Plus a need for something that expands easily and can be quickly broken down and stored in small space or transported to new location.

Stand consist of wooden saddles (drilled and split from 2x4).  Treated lumber has lasted over 10 years.  I also use ordinary 2x4 and replace after a few years.  Three runs of standard 10-ft sections of top rail (1 1/4" galv.) chain-link fence component.  Pipe has swaged ends should you wish to expand length beyond 10 feet yet look and appear continuous and uninterrupted. 

Benefits: 

Sliding:  galvanized round pipe has very little contact area (less resisting friction) with bottom of hive bottom board and allows easy sliding of hives to left or right when doing splits or doing gradual respacing to spread hives apart or closer. \

Insect Obstacle:  Round hot pipe also tends to cause ants difficulty in traversing hot round path. to the hive.. plus if they leave their standard scent trail it easily washes off with a few rains or a wipe down, whereas wood usually provides a straight flat path where the ants mark a trail that soaks into the wood and makes it easy for them to follow paths on a more permanent basis.  Some of this is theory or my own thoughts, but I don't have ants crawling up my stand to the hive like I did when I used wooden stands... or even stands where bottom of hives were sitting directly in contact with cinder blocks (creating voids or spaces to hide).

Assembly:  No nailing or screwing.  Lay saddles on top of the double stacked cinder blocks and lay the pipes in the cupped out saddles.  Easy to add more supports or more saddles to reduce span for extremely heavy hives.  I find that four supports at 3'-4" o.c. is adequate.  If you want to be safer then five supports @ 2'- 6" o.c. is more beefed up.

Shimming:  to get a slope of 1/8 to 1/4" to entrance, just shim back ends of saddles and check with a level.

I find that a 1 3/8" spade bit is the perfect size for the 1 1/4" chain-line top rail post (sold in 10-ft sections at Lowes, Home Depot, etc.).