Thanks Lone. Now that I've had some sleep and rehydrated I guess I should explain things a bit better.
I think either my beevac design is flawed or I left them in there too long or some other technique I was using was incorrect as there were so many dead bees. When I tipped the bees onto the frames of brood it was a big ball, but not a very lively ball - it looked like 75% weren't moving at all :'(
Since so many were dead I wasn't sure what to do with my ball of partly live partly dead bees, so thought I should leave them in the hive, so I put an empty super on the bottom, a super with the brood frames on top of that, then the lid. My line of thinking was that if I didn't put the empty super on the bottom the hive entrance would be too congested, or blocked, and hopefully the live ones would get out of the ball, and the dead ones would start to be hauled out by the live bees once they got back into their cleaning routine. My concern ATM is that there are probably too many dead bees for the remaining live ones to clean up.
This is why I'm not sure what I should have done with the ball of bees last night, or infact today either? :?
I guess I will trawl over cut-out and beevac threads over the next week or so and work out what I did right and what I did wrong.
I'm just hoping that firstly I got the queen, and secondly that she is still alive and stays on the brood combs.
I certainly learned a few things that I would do differently next time (if I do another cutout). 2 Beeks would certainly have made things faster and easier.
Anyhow time for some bacon and eggs for brecky, then I'll work out how to post pics.
ML