We are running 60 to 80 colonies most years. We do bee removals and catch swarms also, so that is where the bee vac comes in handy. Mondays job for instance was bees in a wood duck nesting box. Kind of hard to brush the bees off comb in such a tight place 18 feet up in a tree. We were able to drive the truck right up to the duck box where we unloaded the genorator.two normal deep hive bodies with ten empty frames and ten frames of drawn comb, the bee vac extention ladder, step ladder, a pail for comb and a small table I use when placeing comb in frames.
Set the step ladder up placed the bee vac on it attach the 15 foot hose.
NO WE DO NOT USE SMOKE DURING REMOVALS. useing smoke will drive many bees to fresh air to fan it inside.
Then set the extention ladder up start the genorator and climb up and start sucking bees off the comb. When the bees are off the side of the comb you can see I cut it from the anchor points, lay it sio I can suck the bees off the other side then if it has no brood or eggs it goes in the pail I have hanging on the ladder.
Any comb with brood and eggs I will carry down the ladder and tie or rubber band in the frames.

Even when checking our normally deep hives bees we don't use smoke. We would rather use a mist of sugar syrup to keep them busy if they ever decide to get roudy.

Al