Rich,
It is my understanding that there are only three occasions in a queen
honey bee's life that she'll fly outside the hive.  For mating flights,
in a swarm (with many other bees), and when absconding (with *all* the
other bees).  Since it sounds like from your posting that she was alone,
it seems most likely that she was on a mating flight.  Unless the Kona
queen you introduced in October was marked and you clearly saw that
marking on the queen that was re-entering the hive, I would bet that the
queen that you saw entering the colony was a daughter of the queen you
introduced in October.  It seems unlikely that the queen that you
installed in October, even if she was unmated when you introduced her
would have waited until now to make her mating flights.  It strikes me
as much more likely that the bees found your fall queen to be deficient
in some way and superceded her and you saw a young queen returning from
a mating flight.
 
It's my experience that supercedure of fall introduced queens is not
that uncommon. On a  few occasions we've needed to requeen in the fall
and have observed that even a new queen with a quality laying pattern
(nice and tight) has been superceded in the spring...  my guess is that
she can't produce sufficient quantity of eggs for spring build-up.
 
I've heard a number of explanations for this, though I can see that some
of them may or may not apply to LA or Hawaii.  The first is that in the
fall (here), the quantity/quality of incoming nectar and pollen coupled
with dwindling numbers of young brood food producing workers (as the
hive focus shifts from reproduction to winter survival) produce less
robust queens. The second is that the weather (here) is rainy and cool
and results in poorly mated queens.  The third is that, in an effort to
mitigate these negative effects of fall breeding (here), folks "bank"
(hold in queen cages) spring bred and mated queens for introduction in
the fall.  This "banking" for very long causes the queen's viability to
deteriorate (forget where I read that, but it made sense to me).  The
fourth reason is that there is a period of broodlessness (here) from
about early October through early January which in effect "banks" that
new young queen (though-i think- not as stressfully as caging does).  I
guess that's why buying fall queens is less expensive than spring
queens.
 
Anyway, I wouldn't worry about it too much so long as you are getting
good weather for mating flights and have sufficient drones in the area
to get the job done...  Watch her brood pattern closely this spring
tho..  sometimes the bees choose an older than ideal larvae and even if
she's mated well, she may not perform sufficiently for honey surplus.
 
On a side note:  Anyone else on the list know who has studied the effect
of preventing a newly mated queen from laying and whether anyone has
compared that effect to to the same for a queen whose been laying for a
period of time-say a season?  Does it have as detrimental an effect as
what i (vaguely) remember reading? For both newly mated and "seasoned"
queens at the same rate?...  My suspicion would be that the seasoned
queen's body would experience the time as more of a rest and the newly
mated queen's body would experience the time as frustrating a strong
urge  (look out!-she's gonna blow!  :^)... though maybe the whole
process isn't stressful at all if the egg-laying tapers off and tapers
back up again (rather than the barrier/cage method of instant
off/instant on).
 
Kathy
(who's going to going to do some reading this afternoon to see if she
can find some of the answers to these questions..)
 
 
 
wd6esz wrote:
 
> Premise:
>         I had a late season accident and lost a queen in October.  I
> since
> bought a mated queen from Kona Queen and thought everything was fine.
> Today I was out looking at the hive and saw an unusual color bee
> flying in
> for a landing.  Upon further inspection, it was the QUEEN.  I am in
> Southern California.
> Question:
>         What was she doing out?  And at this time of year?
>
>         TIA,
>
>                 Rich