The Bee Story

There are no pictures with this.

I posted a request on the Guilford County Beekeepers Association forum, describing my problem with the dead queen. Here is the text and several follow-ups:

Me: I picked up my package from the club on Sunday and installed it. At the time of pick up and installation, the queen was alive. She never made it out of the cage. I now need a new queen. I've called around. Local suppliers won't have queens until about May 1. There is a California supplier who has a 2010 queen for $20 plus $25 or so for shipping. I'm hoping to avoid that.
My current thinking is to combine the new package with an existing hive and wait until a queen becomes available locally when I can split the hive again. Any opinions? Any other options?

Ski: An option would be to put a frame of brood with eggs in the package hive and let them raise their own queen. Drones are available now so 16 days plus from now should provide that many more mature drones. But I have not played around that much with packages.

Wally: I would go with the frame of eggs, but leave the bees on it. There will be a little fighting at first, but they will settle in shortly. The extra bees on the frame will give the package a boost.

Me: I went in with my buddy Doug and looked through three of his strongest hives for a frame with new eggs. All of his queens had chimneyed with brood in the brood boxes as well as in the supers. We found the queen and, avoiding the frame she was on, picked a brood frame and a medium with very young larva as well as some young ready to hatch.
I replaced a brood and medium super frame in the new hive. The packaged bees had drifted to port in both the brood box and the super, so I placed the new frames a little to starboard, hoping they would accomodate more easily. (I had some loose bees in the nuke box I carried the frames over with, so I just dumped them on top and wished them luck.)
So, now I wait. Any more advice?

Jacobs: You can give it about 4 full days and then look for queen cells. You should see them by then. If you have other bee hives around (and maybe even if you don't), you may want to use blue or green painters tape (the kind that you can pull off without leaving glue on the hive or pulling up paint) and put it on the front of the hive in wonky patterns. This may help the queen recognize and get back to the right hive when she orients and goes up for her mating flight. The link below is to Michael Bush's bee math. It will give you an excellent idea about what you should be seeing when.
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesmath.htm

So, that's where it stands.