Orphaned foragers...

[Ollie]

So, I take 3 frames out of a hive that's doing pretty good, one of the frame has a Queen cell(capped), I put that in a card board nuke box ( I love them! $5 and they last at least a couple of years)I check it it after a couple of weeks, no Queen, I check it again a week later...still no sign of brood...so I take all the frames, put them in a box, a sheet of paper on top of another hive (The one where they came from originally) and put the empty cardboard box on a pile of other stuff. Now I did this in the evening, tried to get all of the bees in that box on top of the other hive....Well some of these didn't get the notice, so the next day there's a clump of bees where the cardboard box used to be...next morning they all gone.
Maybe four, five days go by...the cardboard box is on a pile of stuff...bunch of bees going in and out of it...I opened it up, just older bees hanging out, no queen, no combs, nada! So I don't have the hart to kill them, but they could be in that box for a while right?
They found  their box, not even close to where the box was...what do I do with them?

[iddee]

Shake them out in front of the mother hive. Then hide the cardboard box where they can't get to it.They will take up with the hive.

[Michael Bush]

From the time you do a queenless split until you can expect to see eggs is pretty much a month.  Three weeks is minimum.  You will almost NEVER see eggs before three weeks.  Four weeks is typical.  Virgin queens are almost impossible to find without a LOT of practice as they move more like the workers and hide.  Basically it takes about two weeks to get a virgin queen and about two weeks more to get her mated and laying and sometimes three weeks to get her mated and laying, so that's a range of between four and five weeks.  As insurance at four weeks you could add a frame of eggs and brood to stave off laying workers and see if they start a queen cell.

As far as what to do now. Take the lid off.  They will not hang out in an open box.

[Ollie]

I probably jumped the gun a little on this split, you're probably right Michael.
Open Box it is ...but after the rain stops!
Funny how they found their box though..