A friend and I did a cutout on or around Dec. 4th 2010. I caught the queen and placed her in a catcher. My friend took the hive to his house and I told him to go in and release her in a couple of days. Long story short, he did not. I went by to check on hi hive since he was going to be out of town for a few weeks and I wanted to make sure that they were not needing another box. Much to my surprise I saw the queen catcher towards the bottom of a frame and guess how was still in there? Yep, the queen was in there and seem eager to get out. I let her go and was not sure if she would go back to laying. Well, I went and looked yesterday and she has filled every available space with brood. It was a nice inadvertent experiment as to how long you can keep her caged.