It turns out that the bees are not going to be able to be removed as I had hoped. I was looking forward to pulling out the comb and seeing the old hive works. The comb is down into the foundation blocks and is, essentially, unremovable without a lot of expense and work. I used a lighted inspection camera and went for a virtual wander in the bee works to find this out.
Plan B.
The first step is to buy a nucleus hive to start a full sized hive, already ordered but with the long cold spring they are behind schedule. The idea was to put a trap out cone on the wall hive and set up the new hive right next to the opening of the old to have the bees sort of transfer themselves when they realize that they cannot return to the old hive.
This has changed to using a frame of eggs from the newly established hive placed in a small hive box to lure the bees from the old hive to create a new nucleus. The eggs will most likely result in the workers creating their own queens when they cannot return to the old hive. This will result in two hives rather than just one.
I have now added another step. I am going to attempt to trap the queen when she leaves to swarm and create a new hive from the swarm then use the nucleus egg frame method above. This could result in three hives.
This is a picture of my queen trap that I built this morning installed over the old hive entrance.
This will allow workers to come and go freely but the queen won't fit through the bars and will be trapped in the upper chamber through a screen cone.
The trap unit is 3" wide 2" deep and 8" tall. The rails are bicycle spokes (2mm) and are spaced 4.3mm apart and the openings are 3/4 long... although I don't think I needed the vertical supports I put them in anyway. I figured it was a bit more wood for the bees to land on. The queen chamber is backed by metal screening as is the front. I probably could have put a solid piece on but I screwed on battens to hold the screen to let me open it up to retrieve the queen and be able to see into the chamber at the same time.
It's funny watching the bees squeeze in through the rails... they just fit when loaded with pollen and nectar.
