Dave, it would work but you'd be left with a huge wad of bees clustered over the old entry point until time and weather killed them off. Not to mention you would have no means of removing the honey left in the cavity.
Honeybees are truly colony animals unlike bats that we call a colony. Individual bees do not think to relocate themselves like bats. Once the individual is imprinted on it's hive and hive entry it will always return to that spot unless "forced" to reimprint as in the case of supplying a bait hive in a trap out.
By using the bait hive to reestablish the colony outside of the cavity I can use the bait hive colony to remove the honey from the cavity. By using a bee behavior called robbing I can induce the bees in the bait hive to reenter the cavity and "rob out" the honey and transfer it to the bait hive.
Robbing is nothing more or less than opportunistic behavior to gather lightly or unguarded honey stores from a weaker or dead colony. This can be a problem in the beeyard where I try to manage all colonies to be strong and productive but a weak colony can be killed off by it's neighbors stealing from them. In the case of a try out I encourage it to happen once I've depopulated the parent colony by removing the cone to let the reestablished bees on the outside to go back in and do the dirty work. This is encourged by smearing honey on the entrance of the parent colony.
Dave, if you don't want to keep them they can always be sold off after the job but you would need to be able to keep a few hives on hand to supply the needed nucleus colonies for the bait hives or you can use colonies you gather from cut outs as I do. It might be possible to buy a nuc for each job but they are in short supply and costly.
The one in the video came out of an apt complex this year.

So David, after thoroughly reading your post, what you are saying is this: the Senate and the House are really a colony of robber bees and not really Congress at all.

Opportunistic robbers, yes. Bees, no. Honeybees work their tails off every day of their short lives to put aside honey and pollen for the next generation.

Can the dry wax left behind melt and damage stuff?

Not really. There are two moths, greater and lesser wax moths, that will consume the wax. There will be a mass of webbing and coccons left behind by the moths, and the larvae can burrow slightly into the surface of wood when constructing coccoons, the mess and damage will be minimal. A far more likely event these days is the take over of the parent colony by a new to us pest called Small Hive Beetle. This one will leave a mess of soured and fermented honey and pollen as unlike moths they target the honey, pollen and brood rather than the wax. SHB is the trapout wild card and has led to an increase in a rare and little known honeybee behavior called abscond swarming. Had it happen to me this weekend on one of the trapouts I have in progress.
This evening when I have more time I'll do an in depth post on it.

https://plus.google.com/102439749902750466062#102439749902750466062/posts

This is a link to my page and the two videos of a trap out.

As promised a post describing abscond swarming and how it effects the trapout. Abscond swarming as stated is a little known trait of the honeybee, at least in the honeybee subspecies/landraces common in North America. Absconding is common in other subspecies found in other parts of the world. I think we are all familiar with reproductive swarming where a colony splits in two parts to create a new colony so I won't go to far into reproductive swarming. Abscond swarming differs in that instead of splitting with the intent to create a new colony the entire colony packs it up and moves en masse to a different location. This is a pure survival trait expressed when the colony reaches the conclusion that conditions at their current site are so dire that a move must be made. This is a monumental decision for the colony for to do so means the abandonment of all of the comb, brood and honey they have worked so hard to produce. As I said earlier this is not a common trait of the european subspecies but it is of the subsaharan african subspecies. This is directly linked to the differing climates between europe and africa. European bees being from a temperate climate with mild summers with long honey flows and distinct long cold periods in the winter are pretty much locked into gathering honey during the summer and staying put for the winter living off of the stored honey. As such they more or less lost the desire and ability to abscond as easily as their african ancestors (honeybees originated in subsahara africa and moved out of africa in at least three different waves). The african subspecies living in areas with long warm seasons and little to no cold periods have less compunction to rely on staying in the one spot where they have stored their honey as the opportunity to0 gather more is almost always available as long as there is water. It is actually the long periods of dry that regulate the movement of bees in subsahara africa. This also explains why the africanized bee has been so successful at colonizing the Americas since they will abscond almost at the drop of a hat and will fly extremely long distances when they do so.
Okay, do we got what an abscond swarm is? As I said the european stock we deal with have ALMOST lost the desire to abscond but it is still there deep in their genes to do so if pushed hard enough. A trap out can and will push them to that especially when you combine that with a stressor that ironically hails from the honeybees ancestral home of africa, the Small Hive Beetle (SHB) aka those @#$%^&*( devils to us beeks.
Under ideal conditions as they existed pre SHB absconds were rare, I never had it happen, and the normal course for a trap out took 28 days minimum and the normal course of events was for the parent colony to be rather quickly depopulated in the first few days with a slow trickle coming out over the course of a month until the small number remaining inside with the queen succumbing either to attrition or falling victim to the raiding party when the cavity was opened up to allow robbing to happen. If an abscond occurred it was rarely observed as the queen and a very small cohort would leave late in the program, to small of a number to reestablish elsewhere.
Under current conditions, at least here in the south, it can be taken entirely for granted that any honeybee colony found anywhere at anytime even when swarming for whatever reason will be playing host to those damned SHB.
Now for the whys of how SHB force an abscond swarm. We beeks have but only one real natural recourse to protecting our bees from the nasty parasites and that is to maintain as strong a colony as possible with as little wasted or empty space in the hive. A strong colony with enough bees to patrol every square inch of their cavity are pretty safe from the ravages of SHB because the bees will actually herd the little devils into corners and cracks and cerevices and post a guard on the little devils. As long as the beetles are hemmed up they can not do their damage but the minute a single female beetle can make a break for it and get to the combs it's all over but the crying. The little female beetle is built for defense like a little tank and is small enough to get way down deep in the cells of the comb where she commences to laying eggs that almost immediately hatch out into comb destroying maggots. These maggots begin burrowing through the comb seeking out the proteins in the pollen and brood consuming them as they go while at the same time spewing honey fermenting yeasts throughout. In short order, as in hours, the combs that the bees so depend on are a slimy, sour smelling mass of writhing maggots completely useless to the bees. And so the mass exodus commences and the bees abscond en masse to parts unknown.
How does the trap out cause this end result? Remember me saying a strong colony with enough bees to patrol every square inch, well the trap out just locked those bees out in the cold. It is all to common these days for my trap outs to end early sometimes with the client watching the colony go over the fence. Sometimes I am lucky and can arrive in time to hem them up and hive them into a suitable box, usually not. Most of the time I arrive to check the progress and detect the sickening smell of fermented honey. It saddens me but at the end of the day I do realize that I have indeed accomplished what I told the client I would do, there are no more bees in the tree or wall. Maybe they're down the road a piece and I'll get the call to get them again but it is what it is. My main consolation is that if it occurs early enough in the proccess and season they can get reestablished elsewhere in time to make through winter.
That should be the case with the swarm I watched sail into the tip top of a tall georgia pine this week, to far for even this beekeeping daredevil to try.
For this reason those of us who perform trapouts need to take some considerations into account prior to setting up a trapout. If the colony is located in an area where the smell of fermented honey and a mass of writhing maggots would be objectionable then the cut out should be performed instead. It used to be that trapouts were a wonderful option to avoid cutting into walls but since many of these walls are in inhabited structures the possible results steer us back to the cut out. Another consideration is the age and strength of the colony to be trapped out, ie just how much honey is there to ferment. If it is a small just moved in reproductive swarm then the risk of fermentation is low as will the ability of the SHB to induce an abscond and in the inverse the likelihood of an early abscond is greatly increased as the larger the colony with greater stores gives more fuel to the fire SHB can create.

Sorry for the length, just thought I'd throw this out there for those interested.

I vote for the honeybees.

Just another note on absconding and SHB. Strangely enough once I get my bees back to the yard from the clients the danger isn't over from SHB and oddly enough the trap out colonies fare much better then the cut out colonies. I can't recall loosing a trapout colony, the bait hive colony plus bees that were moved from the parent colony, to SHB in the yard but the cut out colonies are a whole different story. The cut out colonies have been forcibly relocated and have gone through a much more stressful transition to their new home. These colonies have absconded on me even without SHB getting started.

this is amazing stuff! You made a great video warrior, clearly explains the how to's.