Ross states that he has a small hive (eight frames) that has a cluster of bees
on the outside that never go inside and asks how to get them inside so he can
move the hive.
 
As another responder said, they can be moved, even hanging to the outside of
the hive if wrapped in screen.  I would go so far as to say that if you don't
mind losing some of the field bees and just want to move the colony (and the
field bees will join other hives anyway), you can move them even without the
screen just by putting them in a running vehicle.  I have done that before
(unintentionally) when the cover on a hive I was moving in my enclosed minivan
came off and the bees started coming out and clustering on the outside of the
box.  I just took off anyway in the van and the vibrations from the running
engine seemed to keep them from flying--they just stayed clustered until I
stopped the vehicle and took them and set them on their new spot.  For that
particular experience, since I had little experience at the time, I kept my
protective bee gear (veil, etc.) on while driving, but found that the bees did
not fly anyway.  Now, since I know from experience how bees normally behave
when being moved in a running vehicle (especially if you smoke them good before
you move them and "try" to get them to go back inside with smoke before moving
them) I will often not even put a cover on the hive box.  I've never
experienced a problem with angry bees while moving them as long as I've smoked
them first and as long as the vehicle engine is running and the "car" is
moving.
 
When reading about your bees, I was reminded of another experience I had when
I wanted to remove a box of bees that had built a colony in a squirrel nesting
box.  It likewise had a large cluster of bees hanging on the outside of the
box.  I smoked them all into the box and covered the entrance hole, but things
still didn't seem right to me.  The box was mounted on a wooden fence.  I
finally got a chair (since bees still seemed to be coming out of somewhere) and
climbed up on it and looked over the fence, and there was a huge cluster of
bees hanging on the back side of the fence (about the same size as the cluster
that had been on the front before I started smoking them).  It became ofvious
to me that there were more bees there than would fit inside them box.
 
Best wishes and good luck.  You might think of moving the bees into a larger
box before moving them to their final destination so that all of them will fit
inside the box.
 
Layne Westover
College Station, Texas, USA