[abingaman]

I have requeened about a dozen hives and this is the first I have seen this happen. I had some queens shipped to my house and then the Pennsylvania weather turned to pooh. I had to wait three days before I could get the queens in the hives. I split a hive into three (2 - 4 frame and 1 - 2 frame). The original queen went in the 2-frame hive, the other two were requeened with new mated queens. They had been queenless for about 8 hours before I introduced the queens because more crummy weather is on the way. The first hive was very interested in the queen and were gently brushed off (what I typically witness). The second hive kinda milled about not really interested in the new queen. A few gathered on the screen and were easily brushed off but then they didn't come back right away. There were about five bees that immediately started eating the candy plug and they were making a loud roaring sound in the hive as they moved her pheromone around the hive (I assume this is what was happening). It was weird not seeing a lot of them on top of the queen cage. I had 4 full frames of bees so the number of bees wasn't the problem.

Has anyone else run into a situation like this? They are Saskatrakaz queens.

 

[RayMarler]

I am theorizing here...
They are not fully rejecting the queen because they do not have a queen of their own... Yet.

They have resources of their own to make their own queen, so they are not fully embracing keeping the queen you are introducing either.

I would suggest to put the cork in the queens cage, and check in three days and destroy any wild queen cells you might see started. I would do this again in another three days. Then check to see how the bees are liking the new queen. By then, she should have built up her pheromones better from beeing in the hive environment, and the hive will accept her more readily. She may be a mated queen, but she has gone "off laying" and the bees sense this.

This above is my guessing on the reasons you are seeing what you see.

 

[abingaman]

I think I figured it out! I went out and quickly removed the cage from the hive because the bees weren't interested in it and closed things up. I brought the queen cage in the house and popped the staples and dumped it into a push-in cage. Upon inspecting the bees, I noticed there is no queen! So I was shipped a container of nurse bees by accident. I purchased the bees through Lappes so hopefully, they will make it right. There were no dead bees in the container and the candy plug was still intact with about 1/4 of it eaten through. So mystery solved!