I started using SBB last year for the first time. I know that there are lots of posts questioning SBB. I thought I just might throw this in as another use for a SBB. This week I picked up a swarm that weight about 4 lbs. :-D Yesterday I did a cutout and removed a recently established swarm from a home's ceiling/roof air space (not big enough to be considered crawlable) :roll:
The cutout was a small 2 lb. of bees. Non of the comb could be considered as usable for it was thin, week and unproductive (meltdown!). I doubt very much that the queen survived as most of the colony ended up getting vacuumed up.
Now for the part about the SBB.... :-P When I got home, instead of using the newspaper method to join the bees I used the SBB as a buffer. I first installed the SBB directly above the previously caught swarm. I then installed the deep brood chamber which I used to vacuum up the second colony of bees. I sealed the entrance on the SBB so that the second group of bees could not fly out. Directly above the brood chamber I installed a medium supper of sealed honey from last season. I then sealed the top with a screened mesh cover for ventilation. The bees in the top section now have room and food but can't fly out. Since I don't know if the queen survived I will leave it in this fashion for several days to see if there is any egg laying activity on the upper section. Today I removed the entrance block and now the top bees can go about their way. If they intermix with the bottom group then that's fine. In a few days I will check the upper section for brood. If no brood then I will remove the SBB and join both colonies together.
Sounds like a cool solution on an oft encountered problem with cutouts and small swarms.