Hi Ian
 
I have some experience of this as I have been given in total 9 hives in the past which were very
neglected. If you want to change the queen, then there were a lot of posts on this earlier in the
year, but if you want to keep the queen then I have a few ideas, some with pain involved, and some
without!
 
If you put a new box of combs under the old ones (if you can) then the bees will fill the top ones
with honey, and late in the season, the queen should be laying in the bottom box.
 
Another other way is to dismantle the hive bit by bit and cutting the combs as best you can and
tying or using rubber bands to put them in new frames, and slowly building the whole thing into a
new hive. I had to do this with the first bees I ever got, which were in two "gift" hives which had
bees in them. The hive had been stored with frames with no foundation, and bees had gone in and
built comb diagonally accross all the frames. Fortunately I had one of the most experienced
beekeepers in our district (the late Dr Roger Wastie) to help me (well I helped him really!!) This
process is incidentally a lot easier with two people as it is virtually impossible to cut, hold and
tie a comb into a frame with only 2 hands. I would also reccomend doing this on a warm day during a
flow.
 
I have also found that if you can dig out the outer frames somehow, the outer section of the box
can sometimes be dismantled leaving the block of combs exposed, they can then be taken out easier
than if they were having to be pulled out straight. This is because the problem is the propolysing
and waxing  on the bottom of the combs to the one underneath which in old equipment causes the top
or bottom bar to pull out. If you can get the outer box away you can put your hive tool along the
bottom, then rock the comb away from it's neighbours.
 
This can be made a bit easier by (again only if you can) moving the old hive even  a few yards and
putting another hive where the old one was so that you lose the flying bees.
 
Another way is to let them swarm and make sure you catch it! then put this lot into a new hive.
 
Steve