Dear Elizabeth Petrofi!
You have been asking what to do with heavy supers needed to be lifted in
beekeeping.
Well, there is one solution which could be helpful in your situation,
however this will involve a quite different way of bee keeping you might
be used to.
The principle is the following:
There is a hive (in Germany called Golz-Beute) which has a setup, that
you have the one broodchamber with say 17 combs (my system I am working
with) and this brood chamber is seperated by a vertical queen excluder
for the honey room. By such a setup you can reach any comb in a beehive
without lifting anything, just take off the lid and you can reach either
a comb from the bood chamber or the comb from the honey room. There are
no supers etc, just one bee hive, which is standing an a small stand, so
that you do not need to bend over.
In such a system you are lifting only one comb at a time, thats it. I am
aware, that people are saying that such a system would not work, since
bees will take the honey to the top and not to the "backyard". However,
this is not true. I am working with such a system now for 25 years (
with 30 hives) and I love it; I would not like to work with the
langstroth type bee hive at all, since beekeeping with such a
"Golz-Beute" is quite easier and handling the bees is much quieter. A
lot of beekeepers, especially oder once are using this system for
reasons that they are not able to keep bees inlvolving heavy lifting.
If you are interested, I could send you some pictures and a drawing of
the hive dimensions etc.
I assure you, it is pleasant to work with a system where each comb can
be reached withoud any lifting.
With best regards
Ahlert Schmidt

Prof. Dr. Ahlert Schmidt
Institute of Botany
University of Hannover
Germany
e-mail: [log in to unmask]