I know it's VERY easy to miss the queen. I have four hives that I have never seen the queen. There are eggs and larva but I can never find a queen. Three days ago I installed two three pound packages with marked queens. Yesterday I was checking one of them, and of course was looking for the marked queen. It didn't take long for me to see a big beautiful queen. It was easy to tell she was a queen by the body shape and the way she glided across the comb. Only problem, it was not marked! I know the queen I inserted was marked because I saw the white dot when I put her in and was wondering why the dot was white when 2007 queens should have been yellow.
Anyway, there are plenty of eggs with this queen. I guess she was in the package with the 3 pounds of bees and must have killed the marked queen.......