When I had set up the hives at the satellite yard I had just put them on several cinder blocks and (since I had not brought enough cinder blocks) a nuc box. I could have just put them on the ground, but I don’t use hive stands and I like to have my hives off the ground. I had meant to come back and replace the nuc box with a cinder block, but I kept forgetting to bring them down. One day at work I notice a narrow shipping pallet next to a dumpster. It was solidly built so I brought it home and then to the yard to place under the hives
The difficulty is that I was doing this with hives full of bees and honey, the former likely to get peeved if moved and the later just plain heavy. The process ended up going surprisingly smoothly as I placed the pallet in front of the hives and was able to scoot each hive onto it (since the pallet was at about the same height as the blocks) and I was then able to slide the pallet back into place (thanks to the smooth planks of the pallet and the coffee bean bags I was using to keep the grass from growing up right under the hives.
I left the cinder blocks in a stack next to the hives. This later proved useful as a convenient place to put items on, especially when trying to reach over the fence. The pallet had a unforeseen benefit as I can slide my foot right into it when preparing to live a box off a hive. This made the lifting significantly easier as the weight of the box was closer to my center of gravity and I could lift with my legs more than my back.
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