It becomes a very expensive hobby also, with a lot of frustration when your hives just suddenly die or disappear. I'm down to 2 hives and have been feeding them sugar syrup since December. On a nice warm day, they will go through 1-2 quarts a day per hive.
If he had cut the limb off, he could have shaken the majority of them in the hive without pissing them off so much.
I got this swarm a couple years ago. It was almost 3' long and about the diameter of a basketball. Completely filled up a deep hive body. I asked the homeowner if I could cut the limb off to get them down and he told me I could cut the whole damn tree down if I got them out of his yard.