I've been working with a friend to keep up with the local swarm calls and we got a fairly routine call the other day for a free hanging colony under a tree branch.  It's a nice little colony about 6 combs across and 12 inches wide by 18 inches long.  It's hanging about 25 feet up in a locust tree directly over the northbound lane of a moderatly busy residential street.
Suddenly it's not so routine any more - the kind of situation I usually decide will take care of itself without my help.
 
But my partner has some pretty good connections among the local public servants, and has managed to get the city arborist to schedule a morning for us to go up in the cherry picker and bring it down a week from Friday.  Well, ok then.  I'm game for something new and different.
 
We've been working on the details, and have come up with an ambitious plan to try to preserve the colony as much as possible in its original form rather than binding chunks of brood comb into frames.   Our current thinking is that we can build a modified top bar hive and transfer the existing comb from the branch to the top bars.  The trick is to securely attach the comb to the top bars.  What we hope to do is to coat the surface of the top bar with wax, cut a comb from the tree, carefully turn it upside down, melt the wax on the top bar with a propane torch and press the comb into the melted wax.  Then, when it's cool, turn it right side up and hang it in the hive.  All this of course with bees and brood in place on and in the comb.  I don't actually know if it will work.  I don't know how defensive these bees are.  I don't know how well the wax will bond.  I don't know how well the cherry picker operation will go.  It should be fun.  I'll post the results here.
 
In the mean time, if anyone out there has experience along these lines, or ideas to offer, we're open to suggestions.
Michael