Misadventures of a hobbyist beekeeper

I have beehives scattered around the Texas countryside these days, which I now see is a mistake - especially the ones in places too muddy to get to when it's rainy like it ALWAYS is during the springtime. But on to my story. In January I ordered some queen bees and then I couldn't get out to put them in hives for a while. I was going to put some in the hives at my house, but those don't need new queens, it turns out, so I went out to my old friends, the Hubers, where I have 3 hives. The first hive had a failed queen and laying worker bees. If I'd only re-queened them a month or more ago they would have done great, but laying-worker bees is a fatal condition. When worker bees lay eggs the new bees are all drones because the workers never mated. So as the workers die off, there are only worthless drones left. And once a worker bee starts laying her drone eggs, she will never stop. She doesn't produce sufficient queen pheromone to stop other workers from laying drone eggs, so you soon have a lot of them in the hive and they won't stop. And since they weren't raised to be queens, they are the same size and shape as the other worker bees, so you can't find them, and there are lots of them, and they won't stop. So I pulled their comb, shook all the bees into the grass and took the woodenware away. That hive is a total loss.
Next I went a few yards away to where I have two old hives sitting side-by-side. A nearby cedar tree had grown enough to hinder me working around the hives so I gave the bees a few puffs of smoke to keep them calm and started cutting branches back. Suddenly a bee stung me on the finger and as I looked down, 2 more were hitting me on that same hand. I abandoned the smoker and moved away. Dratted overly protective bees! I washed my hand with alcohol to try to mask the alarm pheromone from the stingers and went back for the smoker. More bees attacked but were beaten off with smoke. I opened up the next hive and doggone if it also had a failing queen. This one, though was still laying a few female eggs and there were queen cells in place. So maybe they will get a good queen out of the deal and all be well with them. Maybe. I closed that hive up.
On to hive number 3, which I soon discovered was the one with all the mad bees. I smoked the tar out of them and still got stung almost every time I lifted a frame to check it. This queen was a fantastic layer! The brood was solid workers (which is perfect), and there were frame after frame of them. This would be the ideal hive if they weren't so darned angry. When I found the queen, I picked her up and put her in a cage to be killed later on and away from the hive, then I put one of the new queens into the hive and closed it up. It will take about 10 weeks for all the old, hostile worker bees to die off and be replaced by nice gentle bees from my new, commercial queen. I also took a couple of frames of brood from that hive and put them in the first hive's box, along with some of their comb and then I put another new queen in there. They will build up this year and be good for next year, thus replacing the hive that had laying workerbees.
I was going to go to the next farm where I have two more hives and check on them, but I was so very sore from all the stings after working those three hives that I decided to call it a day. I still have one new queen, but she can't last too much longer in her cage and has to go into a hive somewhere pretty soon.
I still love keeping bees, but I've got to get them so they're closer together and close to where I live. I currently have bees in 4 locations, 3 of which are 45 minutes or more away from home so that a quick inspection involves an hour and a half on the road, and more like 3 hours to visit all the locations. If I spend 12-20 minutes on each hive, it takes all day to do them all, and that is just too much.
On the plus side, I have honey in jars again, which is nice.