queen survived a shake out?!

[dogdrs]

The whole story is complicated.  Basically, I was trying to correct a laying worker hive by adding brood frames weekly.  After 4 weeks of no new queen cells and not finding a queen, I did a complete shake out one week ago today and then added a marked, purchased queen and put her in  the next day(in a cage).  To complicate matters I had brought home a trapped-out hive the day before the shake out and it probably had a virgin queen in it(several just-chewed-down queen cells).  Today, I inspected the hive that I had put the marked queen in and it had an UNmarked queen!  Could a queen that I missed have survived the shake out and returned to the hive?  ( I was VERY thorough)  Could she have been out mating at the time I did the shake out and then killed the queen I put in?  Could she have come from the trap-out hive, coming back to the wrong hive after mating? (The boxes are very near each other)  These bees certainly keep me on my toes!  I'm trying to figure them out, while they just go on about their business.

[iddee]

My guess would be that they removed the mark.

[dogdrs]

Is that possible?!  I've never heard of that, but I'm very new at this.

[Kathyp]

happens all the time.  one of the reasons i don't pay for marked queens  :-D

[riverrat]

If I had a buck for everyone that bought a marked queen only to go in in a few days to find an unmarked one. It would probably pay me better than honey sales. Bees will groom there queen trying to remove anything that is not a natural part of the queen. A paint marked dot on a queen is no match for the bees to remove considering they will chew throught a rubber band and haul it out the front door of the hive in a mater of a few days.

[dogdrs]

Thanks all for the info.  I feel much less confused now.  But I'm sure that will change with my next hive :) inspection.