chelsea headingThis past week has been a nightmarish exercise in futility and there is a good reason there was no column last week. My email started acting "different" on Monday of last week and by Tuesday all three accounts had gone down. This had been a nerve wracking action as each one went down separately and went from working, not working, working, almost working until I couldn’t do anything with it.  
Each time I tried to open on the error message said I had entered the wrong password and would have to change it. When I tried to change the password, the error message said it was wrong. Things were not good by Tuesday evening and by Wednesday things were totally unusable. I screamed at the computer and used harsh language and it still didn't work. I even threatened to trade in my Apple for Microsoft but that didn't even work. Then I knew it was something serious and not something I had done - or had not done.  
Cox.net was no help although the "techs" tried. After talking to four different techs for almost five hours over a three day period, I finally got the feeling they couldn’t help. I am really swift that way.
Cox had emailed earlier and said they were updating all email and it would be wonderful. My update consisted of a problem no one, after several tries and almost five hours of total frustration, could fix.
At one point  I was actually able to get into one account but when I left it to try another account, it went crook again. The second time I called, after an hour or so, that tech turned me over to someone "who knows this stuff" but he was also unable to help. Jumping way ahead, I gave up and took the machine to a repairman who fixed it in a short time. Yes, it was expensive to fix my "update" problem but I can now use my computer after a week of saying not nice things to it and about Cox.
During all this trauma I had multiple bee problems. I caught a swarm of bees in the Bradford pear tree in my front yard. As I had used up all my available equipment I really had to scramble to find something suitable to house them. From here it gets strange. Knowing a swarm may take off one learns to "lock" them in place until they are accustomed to their new surroundings/housing. I made sure I plugged all the holes, entrances and even put a queen excluder on top so the queen could not leave.  
Not much later I saw a swarm in the mulberry tree in the back yard so I quickly cut limbs and went through several contortions to get them all as some were hanging across the fence in the neighbor's back yard. After giving up finding my [pruning saw I found my giant clippers which almost served as well.  
Yessir, I should have been suspicious by this point but I was still very bummed out about the computer and, evidently, cannot handle two major problems at once.  Actually, there were so many other things going on and "chores" and projects I was trying to get done that I did not take the time to think,
So, some while later when I was getting ready to examine what swarms I had captured and actually had a clear minute to think and I realized that something was obviously not jake. Finding one swarm in the back yard would be unusual but finding three? Probably never. This one swarm re-swarmed three more times and finally, on the last try, left this area completely.  
“Oh, and during all this robber bees were after my hive on the east fence. Most of those bees were over in the neighbor's tree and she was trying to kill them by spraying them with water. I tried to save them but got only a very few which I combined with a bigger hive. The last I saw of that hive was them headed east at about 20 feet high.
And... just to light the candles on the cake, this is the first year since I have been trying to keep bees that I have had NO calls for swarms. Friday morning of this week I am to go to an elementary school to do a bee program. This will be for second graders and they will think I know what I am doing. I shall not tell them the truth.