I'm a hobbyist beekeeper with one hive (yes, I know, I should have at
least several, I'm working on it).  My hive is about an hour's drive
away (I live in the city and can't easily keep bees here), and the
non-beekeeping aspects of my life keep me fairly busy, so I don't
manage to visit my bees nearly as often as I'd like.

Last summer, a bear knocked over my hive (2 deep supers).  The supers
stayed together and the cover stayed on, so the bear "scooped out"
some of the frames from the exposed super.  When I discovered this, I
replaced the bottom board + slatted rack (the bear had dragged it off)
and put the hive back together.  (I was surprised at how calm the bees
were during this--their hive had been exposed to the elements for
almost an entire week before I was able to get there and take care of
them, yet all I had to do was smoke them a little bit and they
practically ignored me.)

What I want to do now is replace the entire super that the bear
damaged.  (Some of the frames weren't damaged, but the frames in the
damaged super were all frames that I'd put together when I had just
started beekeeping two years ago, and didn't know to ALWAYS USE GLUE
as well as nails when assembling frames.)

What I'm thinking of doing is putting the new super on the very
bottom, then putting the undamaged super in the middle, then the
damaged super on top.  But once the bees draw out the foundation in
the new super, then the trick is how to get the damaged super off of
the hive without 1) taking the queen with it, if she happens to be in
there, and without 2) taking away brood / food.

I was thinking of using Bee-Go to drive the bees out of the top super,
then slapping on a queen excluder immediately underneath it (above the
other 2 supers).  Once any remaining brood hatched out, I could
replace the excluder with a bee escape (or just use Bee-Go again), and
remove the super.  I'm guessing that if I put it out somewhere in my
yard, the bees would find it and rob it out.

Does anyone have any better ideas how to go about this?

Thanks,
James

--
James Ralston, Information Technology
Software Engineering Institute
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA