The first cut out I did was successful but I ended up leaving a lot of bees behind simply because they would not stay in my nuc box, they would fly back to their old hive, naturally! So I needed a bee-vac even if it killed a percentage of the bees vacuumed up I would still be ahead since otherwise I would end up leaving even more behind.

When building one of these things it doesn't really matter exactly how the vacuum looks so long as it follows a few basic principles.

#1: vac tech 101, intake hose (bee goes in) empties into a air permeable container (screened box/tube)

#2: vac tech 101, permeable container rests inside non-permeable container (air tight box/tube) this will generate suction.

#3: vac tech 101, anything that blows also sucks (insert pun), so I used the intake side of a small leaf blower, this is installed between the inner and outer container generating suction that pulls the bees into the air-permeable (but not bee permeable) "basket".

#4: No kills bees, if you wanted to kill bees you could just use a shop vacuum, since we don't, I installed two things, the first is a throttle, this is a 2" hole that I can cover in degrees (using a sliding card) thus relieving air speed from the intake hose, the second is a padded plastic crash pad to prevent any resulting damage from being thrown into an otherwise hard surface.

#5: Size, the holding "basket" has to be big enough to hold all the bees you are going to "recover" or has to be easy to change so you can reverse reload (empty) your vac or both.

As long as those basic tenants are followed your bee-vac can look as ugly as a hut for all the bees care. So far I have used my bee-vac many times without trouble or massive bee death, the only times I find dead bees are usually when I crush them with the intake hose. And every time I do a cut out I am glad I made my bee-vac let me tell you! I even sucked up a queen by accident and she lived through the ordeal.

The basics of my bee vac are a board with a window screen mesh basket attached set into a large plastic wine bucket, with a leaf blower and clear plastic 1" hose attached. Everything is attached to the board, keeping in mind principle #5 I also made everything changeable so I could build several board baskets and swap them when they fill up. The only unusual thing is that I routed a circular groove in the board to match the lip of my bucket, no rubber seals are needed.