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>  c.) Usually bees know a lot of things newbeekeeper (like me) are just
>  learning.
 
To which Thomas Cornick said:
... 2 kinds of beekeepers those who fight the bees and
    those who give the bees what they want.
 
I can appreciate these comments so much being a first year beekeeper, but
along with those remarks would like to add that I have learned so much in the
last week or so by being diligent and taking the extra time to visit and
inspect my hives thoroughly on a host of days.
 
Briefly, I picked up 4 nuc hives several weeks ago -- in the first ten days,
two hives completely lacked any newly laid eggs. I suspected that the queens
were lost in the bee transfer and ordered two new queens. As soon as the
queens were released, they ended up being killed by the queens that were in
the last throws of supercedure. LESSON for the newbie beekeeper: I should
have inspected each frame completely for queen cells and I would have figured
it out.
 
My two other hives were packages several months back. One queen quit laying
and I was able to install a new queen by killing the old one. They had balled
the old queen, which I asked about on this noble list and received several
helpful opinions about. I saved my new queen by locating the one queen cell
getting ready to pop, along with any cups.  My other package queen suddenly
disappeared and I have about 8 queen cells ready to pop in that hive. Why the
presumably recent queens were replaced has been answered by this list in the
past week or so --- it just happens (much of the time). If I hadn't had my
new queens marked, I wouldn't know that they weren't the same queens.
 
A HUMBLE POINT: for the newbie beekeepers in the audience, the fact that I
had worked with a commercial beekeeper for several weeks provided the initial
knowledge and courage to jump in and work the hives to the point of
understanding what was going on. By returning several times in a week of hive
mystery, I was able to comprehend and then work the situation, so that IN
COOPERATION WITH THE BEES, I now can guide and assist them in what they do.
 
But certainly, like a queen bee, I have found out that the workers, ruling
together as a colony, are the boss. By not being timid about inspecting each
hive completely many times, I have gained a tremendous education and will be
much more successful about helping them to survive and not getting in their
way otherwise.
 
Bees are the coolest.
 
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