George said:

> An Observation Hive is a "pain in the fanny" to manage and look nice.

This may well be true of the one-frame-wide type of observation hive,
as these are simply too small to create a colony with any future.
About the best I could suggest for these would be to rig a plastic
queen excluder to restrict the queen to the uppermost "medium", thus
limiting her laying area.

But I don't use one-frame-wide observation hives. I set up several every
April, and don't even visit them more than once a month.  In Fall, I take
them down and move them to "winter quarters", standard woodenware in one
of my yards with frames of honey donated from other hives.

> It is so small,

Only if you think small and build small.

> that a new young queen will lay so much

Only if you fail to restrict the queen to a limited area,
a classic error with drastic consequences.

> that the bees are always swarming.

Never had a swarm yet.  Never even had a swarm cell.
I was paranoid the first year, and checked weekly.

> I always insert some old queen in my observation hives rather than
> kill them, so that brood production is minimal.

Me too - a "retirement plan" for queens that are known to have
"spotty" or "slow" laying patterns.  Not just any "old" queen will
do - some "old" queens have impressive egg-laying abilities.
You want to verify that you have a "lousy layer".

It is also a nice way to "save" a colony that one would otherwise
combine in spring due to low population numbers.  As long as the
colony is not mite-infested, you have an excellent ob-hive colony
at "zero" cost.

An easy-to-make, easy-to-ignore observation hive can be made from
2 nuc boxes and one "spare" nuc.  Just cut holes in the sides of
each for "floor to ceiling" glass windows, mounting the glass so
it is flush with the inner (not the outer!) surface of the hive body.
Remove the inner cover plywood (or masonite) on one nuc, and replace
it with 8-mesh stapled to both sides of the frame, and then screwed
into pre-drilled holes in the nuc body.  (No outer cover is used
on any of the nucs.)

Then cut a groove in the front, rear, and bottom to allow one to
insert a cut section of one of the newer plastic queen excluders
just behind the frame facing the front "window".

The queen is thereby restricted to the frame closest to the "window",
which solves 99% of your problems.  I use two nuc boxes (using medium
frames) with 2-inch clear plastic tubing and twin pivoting "airlock"
doors on each end of the tubing.  The second nuc also has "picture
windows", and is loaded with foundation to keep the bees busy drawing
comb.  When they finish drawing comb, the "airlock" doors are closed
to prevent bees from escaping into the room, the nuc is swapped with
another that was been pre-loaded with more foundation, and the "drawn"
nuc is taken outside near the entrance, set on the ground, and the
"airlock" is opened to allow the bees to return to the hive.

The "comb drawing" nucs have solid (inner cover) tops with a large
hole cut in the center slightly larger than a screw-on cap for a
feeding bottle, with 8-mesh stapled to the inner surface.  This
allows early/late season feeding with a small (16 oz) feeder jar.

All components are screwed down to a sturdy base.  The airlock
doors are "locked" into their open positions with firmly-driven
flat thumbtacks.  Kids will fiddle with everything, and an ob
hive needs to be bullet-proof, idiot-proof, and vandal-proof.

Note that all operations described above can be performed by the
retailer, since none of them involve any direct contact with bees.
I can come by with more frames of foundation, and "reload" a "drawn"
nuc any old time, and so can an intelligent retailer, once the bees
have evacuated a "drawn" nuc placed outside (most often, overnight
will do).

I also use the 2-inch clear tubing and "airlock" style doors for
the entrance.  My entrances run as high as possible, so that the
bees exit/enter well above human height.  One needs to suspend
some clothesline from the entrance down through the entrance tubing
so that the less acrobatic/intelligent bees have something to climb
that is less slippery than the plastic tubing.  But bees learn
quickly, and most will climb on the surface of the tubing within
a week.

Now, sometimes, the queen is on the far side of "her" frame, but this
is a small price to pay for an observation hive that can be left in
the care of a civilian for months at a time.

If one wanted to get very fancy, one could rig the queen excluder to
keep her on the "glass side" of a single frame.  You would have to both
surround the frame with carefully cut queen excluder material run into
grooves in both the frame and the hive body, and load the frame itself
with Plasticell or a cut sheet of queen excluder material sandwiched
between two sheets of foundation to deal with the scenario where the
bees might attempt to chew through the foundation of the "queen's frame".

Another nice thing to have is a large "flip book" made from the Dadant
"study prints"
http://www.dadant.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=244
hanging near the observation hive.  If you reproduce the text from
the back of the prints on stickers that you put in one corner of
each print, it is a great way to make the observation hive a
"self service teaching tool".  One state park visitor center
even framed the prints and hung them on the wall behind the hive
to make an entire corner the "bee center".

With 10 frames, one can even end up in fall with a colony that has
gathered most of its own winter stores, ready to toss into 2 or 3
mediums for over-wintering.  In Virginia, that is.
Your winter mileage may vary...

                jim

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