Her Majesty was not deposed. The throne remains in the hands — or rather, the wings — of the nasty grumpy queen. The honey bee queen replacement effort continues.
Searching Six Boxes for the Queen
We hunted through the entire hive — all 6 boxes and 60 frames of angry, buzzing bees — trying to find the queen. We went from the bottom up, then back down from the top, inspecting every frame. We did not find her. A marked queen would have been easy to spot; an unmarked queen in a populous hive with aggressive workers is nearly impossible to locate under stress.
We put the hive back together but removed enough honey frames and empty frames to reduce the stack to 4 boxes. A smaller hive is easier to inspect and manage. As a result, the next inspection will be faster and less disruptive. In the meantime, the bees are calming down slightly in the more remote location we moved them to.
Next Steps for Re-Queening
We will try again soon. Re-queening requires finding and removing the old queen, then introducing a new mated queen in a screened cage with a candy plug. The tricky part is confirming the old queen is gone before the new one is released. Additionally, the timing matters — the colony needs to be queenless long enough to accept the new queen but not so long that they start raising their own emergency queens from worker larvae.