More bees than I can count.

1002, Four digest of page views, exciting stuff.
Other than watering I have not been doing much in the old garden. I have however, been doing lots of work with bees. Yesterday, I helped my friend check on his package bees. We only found 1 of the three queens. That means that either the queens were being elusive and we just didn't see them, they left the hive or the other bees killed her. In a few days if there is still no queen the next step is to add some brood (developing bees) from other hives and the other bees will make a queen with that.
Just now I got back from a night at the COBA bee yard. I got to open and inspect a hive with a "mentor" guiding me through it. It was a lot like what I have been doing with my friend for the last week. However, there were 14 swarm cells. That is cells that would hatch into queens so the old queen could leave with half the bees. Sadly I had to kill all 14 of the queen cells. In the end the hive would not have survived had they swarmed. But it still broke my heart to kill them.
I talked to my mentor after the hive inspection. He gets a lot of swarms and in the next day or two depending on the weather I am gonna get a swarm out of a tree with him. Soon I will have more crazy stories to tell you.