Transferring Captured Nest to Hive Box

[Sanford]

I captured a hive by cutting the limbs of a Fir tree and placing all the comb and tree branches, as a unit, inside an empty large brood box.  The bees have overwintered fine.  Now I want to get them into an organized 10 frame hive that I can work with.  Any ideas??

I thought about placing the box with the wild hive brood box above a 10 frame large brood box and driving the bees down into their new home using "Honey Bandit or something similar.  I am afraid of leaving the winter stores and brood behind.

Any thoughts would be welcome.

[Karen]

Place the new 10-frame box ABOVE (not below) the box with the bees and wild comb in it. Let the colony grow up into the new box and then another. Eventually the bottom box with wild comb will have been vacated. You can then remove the bottom box and harvest the wax.

However, you don't want to add a new box too early before the bee population needs that room to expand into it -- mid April? You don't want the bees to have an open cavity above them, making thermo-regulation of the brood below difficult during cold nights by loss of heat into the open cavity above.