Apache and sub folder

I have an old CI3 site on /, and the new CI4 site on /beta. They are both running Apache and I'm tring to get .htaccess to work. I want of course to go to /beta/public/index.php no matter the URL. And the old site should run just as it does today.

It more or less looks like this in /beta/.htaccess:

Code:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    Options +FollowSymlinks
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /beta/public/
   
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ ./index.php?/$1 [L,QSA]
</IfModule>

The baseURL is https://www.mydomain.com/beta/.

When I visit /beta/area where Area is a controller, it says Controller or its method is not found: \App\Controllers\Beta::area. Why does it still assume that Beta is a controller?

If I visit /beta/ I get HTTP 403: Access denied. 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.