Requeening old hive

[ZacWolf]

I was out of town for 6 weeks this last fall, and it is my belief that my hive self-split and swarmed.  I'm guessing that because the amount of honey in the sups prior to my going away was much more than when I got back, and the hive seemed weakened.

I decided to let them winter, and then requeen today.

When I opened the hive I could not find the queen, but I did find an open queen cell.  I'm guessing they had started the process of requeening themselves, as there were also a good number of drones (which made finding the queen even harder).  I don't think I had a worker-laying situation (were not that many drones).

So I bought a requeening frame, and installed the new queen in the hive.

If I missed the old queen, what kind of behavior can I expect to see when I go to let the new queen out in three days?  Is there something I should do in the mean time?

THANKS!!!

[Steel Tiger]

If you have a laying queen and introduce a new queen, you can probably expect a fight and a dead queen when you release her. If you have brood, then you have a queen. If you hang the new queen in the hive, watch the bees reaction. If they're aggressive and are trying to kill her, your hive more than likely already has a queen. You can always put her in a nuc with some honey, brood and worker bees until you're sure that your hive is queenless.