Courage Under Fire (Silver Creek #2) - Lindsay McKenna Page 0,32
that state. Was Dirk interested? Hell yes, he was! Being able to expand his empire was always top in his mind. What he had to be careful of was that the Mexican drug lord didn’t get wind of him working with the Guatemalan one. Usually, regional drug kingpins like himself played in one backyard, not two. It could be costly to Dirk if one or the other found out. Drug lords, after all, demanded fealty and loyalty above everything else. And if he was caught double dealing? They’d send out a team to murder him. No, he had to be careful and look into Gonzalez’s plans to try a second time to establish his drops and routes through Wyoming.
The sprawling city of LA was a good hideout for him, for now. Since escaping prison, he had dodged law enforcement’s efforts to find him. Hiding in plain sight in one of the largest homeless camps in LA was a wise move. He’d let his hair grow shaggy, with an unkempt beard to go with it. Purposely, he’d fitted in with the homeless population—for now.
Leaning back on the sleeping bag inside his gray nylon tent, he finished off the butt and flipped it out the door, clasping his hands behind his head and relaxing into the soft, thick folds of his bed. It was better than sleeping on hard concrete, that was for damned sure.
June 2
“These are very differently built hives than the others,” Chase said to Cari. The shipment of thirty Flow Hive 2 types had arrived from Australia, from a company created by a father and son, who were beekeepers. It was nearly noon and Cari, with the help of Theresa Sandoval, had unpacked them and built them according to the clear, easy-to-understand booklet this morning.
“They are,” Cari agreed, running her fingers across the peak of the rooftop of the first Flow Hive. “I’m interested in their outside-the-box, so to speak, technology. The Langstroth hives you have, are far more work intensive. You have to remove part of the hive to collect the honey. With the commercial Flow Hive 2, you don’t have to, which is a huge time advantage to beekeepers and the bees. You don’t have to use a smoker, no centrifugal extractors, and best of all, no back-breaking work of pulling the honey supers up and out of the Langstroth box.” She leaned over and pointed to a metal lever. “Turn this and it opens the channel within the honeycomb and the honey drains via gravity, into the pipe at the back of the hive and directly into the container you’ve chosen to utilize. This way,” she said, giving it a pleased look, “the bees are not disturbed, and you don’t kill bees by removing and putting your honeycomb panel supers in and out of the hive boxes, which is more humane for our bee people.”
“Seems like it’s really a twenty-first-century leap into a better hive?” Chase guessed, looking it over and then comparing it to the five Langstroth hives that had survived.
“That’s why I ordered thirty of them,” Cari said. “Over the last couple of years, I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from beekeepers who are using them around the world. Now, no hive is perfect, and this Flow hive will need upkeep and care just like any other type of hive, but the fact your honey is going directly into a container, is a huge improvement.”
The warmth of the sun beat down on his shoulders. The weather had gone from cranky in April and May to the longed-for summer temperatures. Today, he wore a blue denim shirt, the sleeves rolled up to just below his elbows. His pair of elk-skin gloves hung partially out of his rear pocket. Chase knelt down, gauging the metal stand that the Flow Hives had. “Seems very sturdy.”
“And made out of lightweight aluminum,” Cari agreed. “There’s a lot of wonderful improvements in this Flow Hive, and Theresa and her children are super excited about them. In fact”—she turned, pointing in another direction—“she and her children are assembling the other Flow Hives in the three fields around your ranch right now. And the packets of bees are to arrive early next week so we can install them in all of the new hives. It’s an exciting time.”
Rising to his full height, he looked at the purple flowering heads just coming into season for his alfalfa field. “The alfalfa and clover fields will be blooming by next week,” he said, nodding.