The nest was not visible, but it was clearly audible in the floor cavity.  There was no easy way to get to the hive.  Since the lower set of boards were all tongue-and-groove, prying one board off only broke it as well as the two neighboring boards.  Not knowing the exact location of the nest and wanting to do as little damage as possible to the caboose, I began prying boards off from the right side, just next to the steel section shown in the photo below.

The nest was exposed after breaking just a few boards away.  It was a fairly small nest - two or three thousand bees at the most.  The whiteness of the combs indicated that they had been built quite recently.  I didn’t realize it at the time since it was quite dark inside the nest cavity (the flash illuminates it well in the photos below), but there is evidence of old blackened wax at the top of the cavity, suggesting that there had been a nest there in the past.

The old wax can be seen in the right side of this photo.

Once the nest was exposed, we set up a hive with two brood chambers.  The lower chamber had eight frames of drawn out comb and two frames of honey.  The upper chamber had three frames on either side and a large space left empty in the middle.  Above and below the brood chambers there were queen excluders to keep the queen inside the hive.  The individual combs in the caboose - dripping with nectar and honey - were easily removed once the boards were pried away.  I placed the combs in the space in the upper brood chamber.  Before putting each comb in the hive, I inspected it for the queen, finding her on the fifth comb I removed.  I gently placed her in the hive, knowing that the rest of the bees would soon follow her into the hive.

After we finished with the bees, we had a tour of the museum.  Jack got to sit in the driver’s seat!