Once I remove the outer wall, I plan on using the vac to collect the bees first then once they are not there to bother me, I was going to collect the comb. Do I then open the box with the bees in to put in the framed comb? Or put it into another box and hope they survive until I get them home and put the frames in when they are at the new site? Any other recommendations?
First off, you can't collect the bees first and the go after the comb. It needs to be an iterative processes because you want just enough suction to barely pull the bees off the comb and you have no way to get the bees that are in between the combs. I usually start by sucking off as many of the bees as I can and then cut one piece of comb out at a time and suck the bees off and then go to the next comb, etc. I always look for the queen first before sucking off a comb, and if I haven't found her by the last piece of comb, I leave it there while I clean up which gives her time to return to the comb if she has been driven off into a crack or crevice.
A good portion of my removals are quite a ways away, so leaving and returning to pick the hive up at a later time is not possible. That is why I designed my bee vac to allow for sucking up the bees during the removal,adding in the brood and queen, and reuniting the sucked up bees and brood before I leave the site. If you have the time, I would suggest building a similar one.
http://robo.bushkillfarms.com/beekeeping/bee-vac/http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php/topic,14066.0.htmlGiven the lateness of the season, I would not want to lose brood. The house belongs to the customer's mother who has just gone into a nursing home and they are renting the house out so they need to remove the bees otherwise I would try to talk them out of moving them until spring.
Yes, lateness in the season is also an issue and I usually try to push them off to the Spring, but sometimes that is not an option and you have to do what you can.