Went to check for leaks this morning and the owner was there. Seems he going to tear the house down and if I want them I need to cut them out as the house won't be there long enough for the trap out. The remark i liked the best was " There is no amount of damage you can do to the house that matters, do what you need to do."
7 1/2 hours later I finally have all the comb out. They were between the first and second floor. When I could no longer reach from the outside and had still not got to the back of the colony I went in and started cutting the floor up. They were in two different floor joist spaces. The first only went back about three feet, the other went back twelve.
No electricity so once I had all the brood comb hung, honey comb in a cooler, and crap comb in some sealed buckets, I started scooping the remaining bees up by the dustpan full and dumping them in a hive.
I didn't really pay attention to how many were in the box before I started the scooping but a dustpan has to hold 1 1/2 - 2 lbs and I scooped it 6 times. Plus the whole entire front of 3 mediums is covered solid 2in deep. I know its 2in because I can't even see my cleats and they are 2in wide.
If I had to guess , when I left there were at least another 5k bees that I couldn't scoop. I should have brought what I had boxed up home but again I worked until it was too dark to see so I left them. Tomorrow afternoon I will go get those and leave a couple frames of brood and a couple boxes to see how many of those left behind I can get.
Going to end up with ten hrs in the removal but for somewhere between 5 and 7 packages worth of bees I think its worth it.