It makes a less interesting story, but the transfer of the Pond Hive to a new hive stand went smoothly today. There was no butterfingers moment involving dropping a box of 10,000 bees, no slippage of the hive layers to release a furious cloud of stings, not even a murmur from the hive residents in fact.
"In situ replacement": we lifted the hive off the old stand and placed it on the new, then took away the old stand and lifted the new stand and hive as one piece on to the original site.