[Clansman]

I'm in the process of building a top bar observation hive completely from see through acrylic which I'm going to install in my front room 

I have an alcove it will sit in rather nicely, it will have a hole drilled through the wall that the bees can use as an entrance.

Just finished cutting the rest of the acrylic, picking up the two sides tomorrow from a guy with larger laser cutter than we have. 

[Caroline1]

Wow that's brave never heard of anyone doing that before hope you can post some pics.

[sss]

Good luck, at least you could do inspections in the dry 

I would not mind this one

http://www.honeybeesuite.com/an-immense-observation-hive/

[Mammyshaz]

It's a great idea. Would love to see piccies once it it up and running.

Good luck with it 

[cloddopper]

You might perhaps consider having five or six 3/4 inch internal wall access tubes in a horizontal line to get access into the hive . That way the bees can fan in one direction and keep the hive cool unless your going to have a high level venting pipe with mesh over it to keep out wasps etc. another thing about the multiple access is that you can use wine corks etc to plug some off when it become hive robbing time to give your hive a bit of defence help .

 I you want to work the bees to take comb off  I found that doing it at night in the dark was good as the bees don't fly in the dark ( they do crawl though ) I used my Petzel head band light on red  when doing night manipulations taking honey off and hive moving .

Once removed comb from the long hives was put in between sheets of corrugated cardboard in a strong box and taken outside where the bees were brushed off with fresh grass whilst a 300 watt flood light inside a fine stainless steel cage was switched on . The bees fly to the light but don't get toasted , my lass & I then used a soft sweeping brush to take off any bees on out suits after a while all the flying bees congregate on the shielded light and cluster up when the light is turned off , come grey dawn they are in a tight ball keeping warm and  when true light comes it's not long before they fly off back to their hive that is close by so long as it's very close to 50 oF ( 10 oC )   

 We always kept the bee suits on till we got into our bee proof cellar , then under strong fluorescent lights then we very carefully checked for any hidden bees .
We had a small window in the cellar which had six bee escapes set in a small window on a pane of perspex  instead of there being glass .  The perspex was painted over in matt black  paint save for a clear ring round each escape. Again any bees that were found and brushed off took off for the lights , by morning they'd almost all got out of the escapes and back to their hives . It saved a lot of worry about large numbers of bees flying around inside the house.