Hi Yogi and welcome to the forum. Beekeeping is local so it would be to your advantage to put your location in your profile. My guess is that you released the queen too early. Yes, the candy is always as hard as a rock, but they will be able to release her 90% of the time. Queens in packages and the bees are not usually related so she is sometimes rejected no matter what. I would definitely look around the internet for mated queens. No question you can find one in time. J